Friday 24 April 2009

An Inspirational Learning Community

This video clip on YouTube came via my Twitter today (Rt:@NZChrissy RT:@Shareski Via @ujdmc). I was moved to post it here and share.

Saturday 18 April 2009

The 90-10 Principle

I got this presentation sent to me via one of those email attachments that gets forwarded around, however I stopped to think about the message in this one and wanted to share it via this blog. How do you react to the 10% of life situations that you have no control over?

Friday 17 April 2009

Twitter Race for 1 Million Followers


I watched with interest the twitter race for the first person to have 1 million followers. There become a race between many celeb/webrities and I quickly watched with interest the race between CNN news network and Ashton Kutcher (a tv and movie star - I like to refer to him as Mr Demi Moore). I didn't follow at first and just watched lurking in the background while he did Live UStream TV to drum up followers... when I started listening to some of his reasons I actually tended to agree... in this world of web2.0 and instant news it is us the public that are the newsmakers, after all this is what we are teaching our students, about having authentic audiences and using social networking to communicate. I also liked that he pledged to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to the help fight malaria campaign.

I like this comment on Brian Solis' Blog "We participate on social networks to express ourselves and share a piece of who we are in the real world, online, to forge relationships with people we respect, trust, and admire and it inspires us to share, learn, and grow together. With every tweet and update, we reveal a bit of what we stand for and what moves us, forming a unique social graph that contextually connects us to others in an irreproducible network. It’s unique to each one of us, and it’s both empowering and powerful.We become media.We become influencers." I also agree that "We’re shifting into a rapid-fire culture that moves at Twitter time" and that "Twitter and the statusphere have become our attention dashboards". I only wish I had been so eloquent to write in this way... hence the copy & paste.
So how do you choose to follow? I personally have a small following (at present it is just under 200) and I follow 135 people. I do not follow everyone that follows me, and often I block people that do follow me too. I ideally only want to follow people that are in education, that I can learn and make connections with. I value the connections that I make from people from all over the world in education and find useful links daily through using my twitter network.
In my "real world" connections many of my colleagues and friends are not "into twitter", the profile of this social networking tool is definately being raised; my friends may raise eyebrows at my "virtual" networking connections, however I feel I'm at the pulse of knowing what's new and what's happening! I heart twitter!