Here we are at the end of Week 2, what happened to Week 1?, I blinked and missed it. I have spent spare moments throughout yesterday catching up on reading and watching.
I enjoyed watching the keynote presentation from Alec Couros, it inspired me to finally put pen to paper and illustrate my PLN (Personal Learning Network) which is now a work in progress.
Something that struck me was the story about the girl who contacted Eric Whitacre (composer) and inspired him to create The Worlds Largest online choir . Eric used his online network to put forward a challenge which to date has seen him receive 2052 responses "it was all about connecting ....all around the world...these individuals alone, together". The phrase .... 'Alone, Together' made me realise that this is exactly what an online network allows, as it is a window for one person to connect to many like minded individuals.
Couros refers to Twitter as "one of the best professional development opportunities", I would certainly agree with this. I remember when I first connected to Twitter (March 2008) and I was sadly dissapointed because I was expecting to be able to make connections with many learning professionals - I followed 2 people, I tweeted twice then gave up.
When I connected again under my current profile kimmy_mc I was participating in an online course and had the opportunity to connect with a few people (followed a few people that they follow), I read a few things (so followed the authors), saw some retweets that I was interested in (and followed them) ...and it took off ...exponentially. Now I follow 155 people (not very many in the scheme of things) but I struggle to keep up with the volume of information that comes at me when I log onto Twitter. It is professional development in the palm of your hand. (literally, now that I have an iphone). Admittedly I am a lurker and I should share more, I will share more...just watch me!
As a result of creating an illustration of my PLN I was inspired to review my earlier posts on my FO2010 blog to reflect on 'where I came from' in those initial steps of my online journey.
Inspired by Alec Couros' family portraits, I included the above image. Also as an illustration of something that is so big you need to look for the finer detail, if you look closely you can see my tiny 1 year old (at the time) son sitting at the base of the tree. This was taken in the beautiful Queenstown Botanic Gardens in New Zealand on a family holiday - very happy memories.
I also watched the recording of Fridays Elluminate-Blackboard session. Todd did a great job explaining how to use Wordpress effectively as a blogging platform. What I would have given to have that type of instruction for Blogger when I first started blogging. I still have 2 seperate blogs as I am unable to merge blogs on Blogger - a bone of contention with me ... so if anyone has any suggestions please enlighten me.
A key take-away for me from Todd's presentation was to keep blog posts concise, or was that Lisa's recommendation? Clearly I need to work on that ! So many development opportunities. Speaking of which, I have not even addressed the questions that Lisa had re: Alec's presentation, perhaps these are becoming 2 seperate blog posts.
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