Back to the Classroom

Sunday, August 27th, 2023

I started building gotLearning as a middle school humanities teacher when I found that the technology available to me did not match what was occurring in my face to face classroom.

After using gotLearning version 1 in my classroom for a few years, I left and started gotLearning and hired an awesome team to build version 2.

Now, after three years of designing, building, testing, receiving feedback and refining gotLearning it is an amazing platform to help teachers and students in regard to learning. However, I haven't been able to teach with version 2 of gotLearning. With the release of our newest gotLearning mobile app (especially the iPad with an Apple Pencil) I could not handle it anymore - I needed to teach with gotLearning.

So, I accepted a position to teach one middle school English Language Arts class at a nearby school. This one 50 minute period three or four times a week will still allow me to be a full time CEO of gotLearning. Yes, I am highly aware that I am going to be ridiculously busier than I already was! But, my role as a teacher and as a CEO very much align here. I will experience firsthand the problems that teachers and students are having and we are helping solve. I doing this because:

1. I love teaching.

2. I want to use gotLearning in the classroom.

3. The introduction of generative AI is transformative and I want to experience this transformation first hand.

So, I am "Going Back to the Classroom!" I am going document my experiences here regularly to show how teaching is going and how I am co-creating learning using gotLearning with my students.

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Visit the Back to the Classroom video pages and see how I am using gotLearning with my students!

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Mike Rutherford is the founder and CEO of gotLearning. He lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania where he teaches one middle school English Language Arts class at a local school. He has been a teacher, instructional technology coach, school district EdTech director, founder of the K12 group at Blackboard, Vice President of Business Development at Just ASK Publications & Professional Development, all before returning to the classroom as a 6th grade humanities teacher at International School Bangkok in Thailand where he built version 1 of gotLearning in his classroom. You can follow Mike and gotLearning at @mikerford and @growthovertime on Twitter.

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