My name is Shan Gill, and I live in Ft. Worth, TX. I have taught middle school for 29 years, and I retired in June of 2006.

My husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary in December, 2006, and we have 2 sons, Brian and Duncan, a daughter, Rachel, and a daughter-in-law, Becky. We also have 3 dogs, and a cat who thinks I'm her mother.

I graduated from Lubbock Christian College in 1977, with a BSED. My major field was Elementary Education, with a teaching field in math, and half of the credits I needed for a second teaching field in art.

In 1980, I finished my teaching field in art at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Since then, I have continued my education with a few college courses, and many workshops and conventions, almost all in the rapidly changing world of computers.

My first experience with computers was in college. I worked for three summers for the city of Lubbock, in the Weed Control department. My job was to take addresses of lots that had too many weeds, and locate the owners on a computer. We then sent out letters telling people to cut the weeds. I found that I really enjoyed using computers to find information.

After college, I started teaching junior high math. For the first three years, the closest thing I had to a computer was a calculator for averaging grades. This was a major advance, because these were the first computing machines that were small enough to be portable.

In 1979, I was one of three junior high teachers in the Arlington, TX school district who were offered a chance to take a workshop given by the Tandy® Corporation on using their new machine--a "home computer" called the TRS-80. After taking the workshop, we were given our first classroom computers--32K Commodore Pets, with cassette drives. The next year, my school installed our first computer lab--twenty five 16K Commodore Pets. It quickly became obvious that students were fascinated by these new computers, and so was I.

Over the next few years, I took classes to learn to use technology. In the summer of 1985, the state of Texas decided to offer Computer Literacy classes in all middle schools that fall. The only problem was that there were no teachers certified to teach the class. The state offered a test to get the certification, and I was one of the first teachers who received that certification.

The Arlington district eventually moved to MacIntosh computers, so I learned to use a strange little device called a "mouse". There were many people who thought the mouse was just a toy, and would never catch on! I taught both math and computer classes in Arlington until 1991.

In 1991, I moved to the Lewisville ISD, where I had the opportunity to teach computers full time. I taught there for 15 years, and I retired in June, 2006.