I've come to the roll of elementary school teacher from a career in web development. There is a philosophy within developer communities (and beyond) called open source. ("the open source way") This school of thought has made it possible for me to discover, learn, and put into practice everything I have done as a developer, and is an idea that I think is important to the "brick and mortar" classroom: "we are a community, formed around a common purpose to bring together diverse ideas and share."
