Gone is the world where my computer was about me withdrawing from the world, the real world of human interactions to do work, play games or simply avoid other interactions. The 2.0 world is all about community. The internet is now a place where I go to build and maintain friendships and professional relationships. 2010 is going to be about continuing to take seriously the new relationships that I am building and to work on them with as much commitment as I do with my face-to-face ones.
What that means specifically:
1. Regular, if not daily, time spent on Twitter. This has been invaluable as a means of beginning my new relationships. I can’t wait to meet some of them in person at Educon at the end of January.
2. Reading and leaving comments on other people’s blogs. I have only just started to do this, but it seems to be an important part of being in a community – reading what others write and offering my thoughts about their ideas. It continues the conversation, and it makes me spend more than a few seconds with their thinking. When I respond, I have to take time to think about what has been written and integrate it into my own understanding. At times, I find this scary, because the process keeps forcing me to be public with my thoughts and my writing. It’s important, though, so I am going to keep working on it.
3. Integrating my students into more of the web than Facebook. I want to continue to teach them about being safe and responsible on the Web. I also want to teach them more tools to use to express themselves and to learn. I would love to find a classroom to collaborate with in another part of the world. Big Goal for 2010! Building an online, learning community for them is important. If I can coordinate it, I want to have them watch another #edchat on Twitter. My 8th graders loved watching the conversation.
4. Being an enthusiastic proponent of what online communication can do for education. I want to try and build and support the community of educators by making it as accessible as possible to other teachers who haven’t gotten engaged yet. This is one of the challenges that I know many of us are wrestling with, how to draw others into the conversation.
Happy 2010 to all!
Middle School Matrix 