[side not commentary here.  This is NOT what this post was intended to be about... well it's happened.  Will Richardson is so popular (he has reached 1000 people following him on twitter) he has been blocked by websense in my district.  Will I guess you have just become a "Social Network and Personal Site"... Fortunately, I can still read him via IE7's RSS reader and NewsGator... working on unblocking him now...]

Back to being “Plugged in…” I have just spent the last 50 minutes getting “Plugged in” to the ICE conference Ning which frankly I have been a part of for the last few weeks.  Today I connected to the conference flickr stream, the conference blogger stream, the conference twitter stream (which I will have to add later as we block twitter too [working on that as well] and then responding to “friend” requests on the ning… then grazing through the 155 members to see who is coming, and… you get the idea.

For me, blogging has been an interest and a painful, ever present reminder of how little time I have outside of my day to really get involved.  I work with my personal staff, my building staff and faculty, my district staff, and the organizations that I am affiliated with through that… then I look at my personal network of RSS feeds, twitter (twits?) and they abundant resources like:

• Tim Lauer twitting – http://tinyurl.com/2j24oo
• Dean Shareski twitting – http://tinyurl.com/yvfc8y
• Vicki Davis, Lisa Parisi, Karen Hokanson, Brian Smith, Buds the Teacher… and the list goes on and on…

So much so, that I have created a whole new favorites category called “Twitter links to review” just so I can go back to those resources that I can’t get to in the moment.  My NewsGator Go! application on my MotoQ Global smartphone  continues to hover at that 400-500 unread mark regardless of how much I read… wow are we all on this much overload?  I read while feeding my 5 month old (Noah), and try not to collapse when he and his 3 1/2 year old brother (Joshua) finally knock off for the night… then, I finally get to talk to my wife (if she didn’t fall asleep reading to Joshua).  oof…

That said, I am looking forward to lurking virtually at the METC conference via Hitchhikr (Thanks David for this wonderful resource) through blog posts and hopefully, some folks will be streaming via ustream so I can participate.  Are we all this crazy? 

We live in very changing times, and education IS changing (albeit slowly) but I am tired.  There have been recent posts in the blogosphere and microblogosphere (is that a word?) about the value of personal networks as well as which network is more powerful and useful… your in-person network of friends, faculty, district collegues, or your virtual personal network of information and linkages to information.  Will also posted (for a blocked resource I am really investing time in Will’s mental playground…) about this topic last week.  Would live to hear your thoughts on which is more beneficial, impassioned, and productive for you.

Here is the crazy thing, have you noticed that when you get plugged in (or re-plugged in) you want to dive in further? or am I really insane?  Just from updating information on the ICE Ning, I would now like to expand my personal contacts in my local area… get involved with ICE and the educators who attend and WANT to get involved.  Not just for technology sake, but because they are investing time as well. 

There used to be an adage… it’s not what you know it’s who you know… I am feeling that it is not what you know, but who you want to get to know is more applicable.  Thoughts?

[Websense photo from vanishingpoint

Technorati Tags: METC,ILTCE,WillRichardson,DavidWarlick,information,networking

Lensby Photo image from Andrew Morrell Phtotgraphy via flicker viewed 02/04/2008 http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewmorrell/76088141/ ]

The idea of bringing engaged learning and true authentic assessment to classrooms through podcasting is truly enriching. The audience is enthralled with Wes. Everyone is taking notes and I have witnessed a number of “ah-ha” moments throughout the room. Thanks Wes for keeping the focus of the presentation on learning and why to podcast as opposed to “how” to podcast.

Let’s start at the beginning… The presentation was Digital Students – Digital Tools: Wiki’s, Blogs, Podcasts, and more.  So you can imagine the turnout… I was 15 minutes early to the session, and there were NO seats left in a 50 seat presentation hall.  Additionally, all of the prime wall space was taken by standing and sitting attendees waiting with anxious anticipation for the presentation to start…

The first clue something is wrong… Tech Services was there attempting to get the laptop connected and get the the presenters wiki… after 10 minutes… connection made, but for some unimaginable reason, they could not get to her wiki… they could get everywhere else on the web, but not to that particular site…  First wave of departing participants…

The second clue something is wrong… Fumbled punt… the presenter attempted to go to alternate resources with sad success… additionally, I can only imagine the frustration and sense of discombobulation due to not having any of the prepared materials.  While she was flustered at not having ANY of her materials… in the scramble to keep things going she began to shine, by asking audience members for experiences with blogs and wiki’s. Unfortunately, with the truggle and distraction of not having the presentation materials she had difficulty stating focused and answering some questions on the topic…  Second wave of departing participants…

Third clue… the wheels have come off the bus and we are going down hill… the laptop she was scrambling with to get to some very powerful content experts sites completely blew up its connection to the net… Now this was really amazing since about 10 people (myself included) were flying wirelessly (I was even dling Office 2007 at the time).  In the end one of the participants was able to get to the presenters site, and volunteered his personal laptop to get something going.

Time of Death… 20 minutes into a 45 minute presentation that could have been very powerful for a number of attendees.  The only highlight for most attendees was the fact that there were a few people in the audience with quite a bit of knowledge on the subject… I feel a bit uncomfortable saying I was one of them, but about 5 -8 people came up to me at the end of the presentation and thanked me for being there, and providing insight… Overall, I was really looking forward to the presentation too, and that was not from a stand point of presenting… but I hope myself and others provided a bit of insight to the 20 or so people who stayed the full time.

For those of you who may venture here, I promise to update both this blog and wiki with some insightful links and information for you to begin to build your knowledge base on wiki’s, Podcasts, and blogging.  I will provide one piece of advice immediately… Walk the Walk.  If you are going to be promoting these tools in you classrooms and schools, start using them yourselves   Besides it’s fun!