ISTE 2012 Expanding Horizons

The kickoff to the ISTE 2012 conference highlighted building networks and connections with like-minded colleagues. Shortly after, I joined the tweet up, and within minutes was greeted and added to over a dozen different twitter using educators groups. While the message of expanding your PLN may be an old one for the early adopters; I could see the importance of the message to the 20,000 teachers attending the conference.
The keynote, featuring Sir Ken Robinson drew an enormous crowd! The overflow overflowed! This speaks volumes to the importance of technology, education, educators and their commitment to improving learning on all levels.
Expanding Horizons is not just about personal professional growth, it is about making the change to a more creative and engaging learning environment for students. Technology has reached a point where we can start making HUGE changes toward this goal.

Twitter and PLN Realities

A recent conference, FETC 2012,  was a reality check that Social Networking is the current "best practice" when it comes to sharing and receiving professional information.  I had been a Twitter "skeptic" for quite some time.  The last thing I wanted to do was waste time trying to follow my friends updates of what they were wearing, when they were washing their hair, or any other truly mundane activity that so many people were posting when they first started Twitting about the webosphere.

It has changed.  I have met several educators, authors and professionals of all kinds that have built networks of 1,000's of people that they can turn to for information.  They are also one of 1,000's of people that others can turn to and everyone benefits from being part of the entire interaction.  Twitter for Professional networking, you've sold me.

Now, I just have to get the lingo down, when do I use # symbol?  what about the @ symbol?  That still bugs me that the Twitter lingo has not become a little easier.  I do wish it was a bit more like Google+ where you can just choose what circles you want involved in your posts.