Friday, May 11, 2012

A Blog About Blogging

I was reflecting on my experiences with collaborative sites that have been introduced to me during my teaching education such a Blogs, Twitter, Gouply, and Diigo. But, I am also looking back to the sites that i am used to such as Facebook and Google. During my undergraduate education I did not really collaborate electronically nor did I use social media sites until I was a senior. At that time websites such as Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook didn't really seem to have a purpose outside of wasting time. Now, I can see the limitless possibilities of how these online sources can be used to collaborate among peers.

While reflecting on the metamorphosis of my thinking, I can draw significant parallels to my experiences when the Internet was a brand new concept. During the summer of 1995 AOL was mailing cd-roms with 50 free hours of Internet and dial up was the only option to jump online. The speed was slow and fairly inconvenient to implement (it used a phone line). During that period I saw the Internet as a place for electronic research and chat rooms. What else could it be used for? Clearly a whole new world opened up and the only limitation is the creativity of the people. 

When first presented with educational assignments on the Web 2.0 platform I was significantly hesitant and the student work I produced while fulfilling the technology prerequisites were timid on its best day. The first major project that would be "shared with the world" was a instructional video that was to be published on Youtube. It was a group project and I did publish it, however, it is set to extreme privacy. I was, and still am, having trouble sharing my reflections with the rest of the world. I guess there is a part of me that assumes that I actually have nothing new or exciting to share.

One of the requirements in my credentialing program is to use Web 2.0 tools to create a professional learning network. So, I had to dust off Blogger (the one in which you're reading) and begin to learn about Twitter, and more specifically the educational chats and the Cybrary Man. It was a requirement to take part in these live streaming Tweet Chats that are based on the interested party (such as #edchat) and the topic. At first the vast majority of my Tweeting experience was ReTweeting ideas that others posted. It wasn't till this weeks discussion of Common Core Standards that I jumped in and started contributing to the feed. For the first time another professional retweeted something i posted and the list of followers started to grow significantly.

Cyrary Man has the list of educational chats, hash tags and times at http://cybraryman.com/chats.html

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