Don’t Forget Networking in Your Own Town

The blogospehere is buzzing with posts about the need to expose and create for ourselves AND students a global network. I am no exception. I am actively looking to connect with colleagues around the world to exchange and learn from their ideas, projects and philosophies. With Twitter, Skype, online conferences and through our blogs, we are connecting more and more across time zones, oceans and borders.

One thing we can’t forget though is the need and advantages to network within your own school and in your own town.

In the last few months, I have had the pleasure of finding two new colleagues that are adding a new dimension to my networking in the educational technology world. The new dimension being that they both teach and live in the same town as a I do!! Who would have guessed that?

Melanie Holtsman, from Once Upon a Teacher blog, and I learned about each other while in a chat at a Ustream meeting in Canada. Sounds complicated? Melanie gives the detail of that story in a post on her blog. Since then we have met a couple of times in person and are avid readers of each other’s blog and twitter.� You can listen to one of our conversation that we recorded.

The other connection I made was a coincidental meeting at a state conference with Andrea Hernandez. She recently started blogging on EdTechWorkshop. While sitting next to each other in a session, we realized that we are both teaching a few miles from each other with the same job description. After I did not get her name in the session, I blogged about it and she contacted me. I went to visit her at her school yesterday (blog post coming soon..).

I am thrilled to have these two women in my network. I am looking forward to continue learning from them online, but also meeting face to face and collaboratively pushing each other to the next level in our personal learning and teaching. (Melanie and Andrea: I have a few ideas for the three of us …)

While global networking is fabulous and with the tools that are available to us make it easy and free… I believe the power of face to face and having a “hot chocolate” together can not be underestimated or overlooked.

Power of Social Networking

I was standing at the door of a session from Discovery, when I overheard the following:

The presenter had a slide of four different images on the screen. One of a painting, another one of a mathematical equation, one photograph of a famous person and the last one being a chemistry formula.

He asked the audience to show by hands how many new what one of the images represented? How many knew what 2, 3 and then 4 represented? There were only two people who knew all four images. The presenter then told everybody they had 30 seconds to get up, turn to the person next to them or shout across the room to find out what the images they did not know represent.

After the time was up he asked for another show of hands. This time over 20 people knew the answer to all four images.

The Power of network. The power of using it to find answers and information. I will remember that little exercise for professional development at our school.

[tag] FETC08 [/tag]

First Teachablemoment Shoutout…Thoughts

As of this afternoon we are 127 members strong @teachablemoment. Everyone is trying to figure out how to use, make time for @teachablemoment and how to access from school, since Twitter is blocked in some school districts.

We had the first shoutout from @reuw from Israel. Unfortunately there were few responses at the time that he sent the request. The shout-backs started to /are still are trickling in after a few hours.

Here are thoughts some of us are struggling with:

1. Need/want to receive instant notification of tweet containing@teachablemoment
2. Don’t want to weed through all other Twitters, might miss shoutout or read hours later (too late to respond)
3. Will we need to send a shoutout to the network and give them a few minutes/hour time to read the twitter, prepare for skype talk, etc ?
4. Will we run the risk of not getting responses if we send no pre-warning? But isn’t that the idea of @teachablemoment? Being able to get a response at a moment’s notice. Right there and right then when a teachable moment is happening in your class???? That moment might be long gone, if we have to send a Twitter “Hey will someone be available in one hour…?”
5. How can we make sure that we have everyone in the group “covered” when there are giving a shoutout?

How can we make the concept of Quick-in/Quick-out teachable moments and demonstration of the power of the PLN workable.

Please let me know your thoughts.�