Beginning at the End- Personal Learning Networks

On the last day of the CA League of Schools K-12 Technology and RTI Conference, I decided I wouldn't go to any workshops that were wildly different from what I'd done so far.  I went looking for workshops that would reinforce what I already had learned.  It had been emphasized over and over that people were using their Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) to help them expand their use of technology in schools.   So I went to Mark Wagner's workshop called "Personal Learning Networks for Educators: Now with Google+". (notes and slides from that workshop here)
Now, I already had a Google+ account through which I've connected with a few friends and I belong to some email lists where I sometimes connect to some good resources... but I didn't have a Twitter account, I rarely used my Google Reader to plug into the blogs I like, and I honestly knew the the keynote speaker, Will Richardson, only through books.
 Mark suggested that there were four reasons to get started on creating a networks.  They were:

• Make Connections
• Make Contributions
• Make Conversation
• Make Requests

Here were his basic steps to getting started:
1. Join a few blogs and start writing one when you are ready.   To that end, I dusted off Google Reader, installed Feedly on my iPad to make it easier to read, and subscribed to a couple of the packaged feeds in Google Reader (Edtech, Education, and eLearning) to round out the blogs I already had.  I also helped get this blog started so I could start adding to the stream.
2. Join Classroom 2.0.  Haven't done this one yet.
3. Join Twitter and follow others.  Done.  I was encouraged by the suggestion of several speakers that you don't have to read EVERY tweet that goes past.  I mainly picked people that had tweeted using the #clstech hash.
4. Join Google+ and follow a shared circle.  I slurped Mark's Edtech Circle with almost 500 people into my existing Google+ account.  I think I'm going to watch that for a while and winnow it down to people that interest me and to whom I feel like I have things to say.  I'm planning to make my own Edtech circle and adding people to it until I have a group that seems to work for me.
Throughout all of this, I keep remembering Will Richardson saying he probably only reads 5% of the tweets he gets.  I decided comparing the stream of information to a real stream was an apt analogy.  When I go for a hike and I watch the water tumble over the rocks in a stream, I don't get caught up in seeing ALL the water go past.  I watch until my mind is full and then I keep hiking.  So I need to think of this networking the same way.
Oh, yes, so you can find me on Twitter @HeddiCraft and on Google+ as Heddi Craft.

Deb's Introduction

My brother was the one who sneaked off from Junior High during the school day to program punch cards at the University computer lab with his equally nerdy friends. I was the wordsmith who wrote for the paper and hovered a bit forlornly on the outskirts of theater nerd-dom. Worse, I wanted to work with kids. I had little hope of being "techie," nor of breaking into the burgeoning tech industry that might have made me into the soon-to-be generation of smart, rich nerds. Alas.

But I was considered at the forefront of technology as a beginning teacher, and in fact, had two pre-service jobs running computer labs at schools (one in Davenport and one in Chinatown in San Francisco) teaching LOGO, how to make simple pictures in Basic, and writing with Bank Street Writer on Apple IIe's.

Now I'm the "technology liaison" for my small alternative program which really just means I'm one of the technology geeks on the staff who's on a steep learning curve, willing to tinker, tinker, tinker with technology (alone, alongside kids, with my colleagues...) despite being "way behind" many of my students, not to mention my own teenage sons. I now have three iPods, but nothing with the moniker "touch," and my phone is not smart. I use what I have hard, even when it's hard, and when I make the jump to something new I'm stoked and a pretty good learner. Technology is about excitement, frustration, and resilience. It's about learning, unlearning, and relearning. It's about access, creation, and equity.

The technology (and the conversation, teaching, and connection) we got to tinker with at the California League of Schools tech conference in Monterey last weekend makes my fingers itch and my brain sizzle. It's getting easier and easier to use, to connect, to transform, and technology fits the way I want to be as an educator.

One small grant, in combination with a small, dedicated staff, and we are all off and running together, even when we run in different directions or at different speeds. I've done loads of professional growth, but this grant means that for the first time in my career I am doing it with my staff in a way that meets our unique needs. Not to mention we found a matching grant of a sort: Two of us won door prizes comping us another tech conference! I'm off to the CUE conference in Palm Springs in March. If we can each win something else, we can keep leveraging one grant into more and more. And this is only year one of a three year grant. Yippee!

Heddi's Introduction

When I was a kid, my parents were early adopters of technology, though they always seemed to get it wrong.  (anyone remember the Betamax VCR, the Commodore 64, and the Timex Sinclair?)  I grew up to be an early adopter, too, and was the first person in my school to have an internet connection in class in 1995.  We used it for access to AOL through which we connected to some other classrooms and teachers and participated in the GLOBE project.

Since then I've been working in education as a teacher, a curriculum consultant, a director of a resource lending library, a tutor, a classroom volunteer, a parent, and a homeschool teacher.  Most recently I joined the staff at Ocean Alternative Education Center and I'm excited to pursue my continued interest in educational technology with the amazing teachers who work there.