LEARN-Connect

I guess each year we try to start with a resolve to improve ourselves. This year my goal is to spend more time on relationships. I guess as I get older I realize more and more how important people are and how relationships have to be nurtured. Sometimes we get so caught up in just dealing with the day-to-day that we don’t take the time to do that. The challenge is to find the time to listen and to really be present. We are so used to multi-tasking, but we need to relearn how to do just one thing at a time.

There are many relationships I want to nurture and grow. Certainly my personal relationships are of utmost importance. But there are also my professional relationships, many of which are online. How can we have more quality in our exchanges so that we all grow through them? I strongly believe it is important to reflect and to be open to changing our ideas and approaches through the dialogue that can happen. That takes time.

I have been exploring different tools with some of my online friends and colleagues and I find some more conducive to fostering exchanges than others. One I find invaluable is Skype. I can have conversations (voice and chat) with people all over the world including group conversations. I do a webcast once a month and meet with my partners in Long Island and Michigan to plan via chats and live conversations.

I also follow a number of people on Twitter. This is a tool that allows you to send short instant messages to multiple people (your followers) and lets you receive messages from the people you choose to follow. While I welcome many of the suggestions for sites and blogs to read, I find the limited 140 characters and the disjointed conversation somewhat unsatisfying. However, I found this video t about how one teacher is using Twitter in her class. She is creating more of a sense of community for her class and parents. It’s up to each of us to find the tools that work for us – after all it’s how we use them that counts.

One concern I have is that the more tools you use the more fractured the communication gets. We need to be able to go to one or two places to get everything. This is where I find an RSS reader is invaluable. I have been using Netvibes It helps by automatically bringing the blogs I want to read to my netvibes page. (If you want to learn more about it go to http://learnconnect.wikispaces.com/rss )

Another tool that seems to be interesting is Ning. This is a more complex social networking tool that allows for blogs, forums, uploading of images and videos – basically all the tools needed for people to communicate and work together. It creates a community! I belong to several Ning groups but don’t find I have time to keep up. So one of my goals this year is to whittle down what I follow to those that I feel are essential. I’m looking for quality to nourish my thinking. I would like to find more personal relationships online with whom to discuss educational issues.

For the new year I would hope that we can begin to reach out to each other as we are all here to enhance what goes on in our classrooms, to give our students and ourselves a chance to reach beyond the walls and corridors of our schools.

So please, read, reflect on what I am writing and share how our online relationships can grow. How do we make this community one which shares, listens and grows together? What do you think?