#edchatNZ Conference 2016 Reflection of Day Two

Day Two brought new learning opportunities again at the #edchatNZ 2016 Conference at Rototuna Junior High School.  I was a bit late due to attending to a cat emergency, so when I arrived, I went straight into the first workshop.  I chose to attend the workshop about Elections 2017.

I chose this workshop as I have done a unit with students during elections in 2005 (Year 4/5 class), 2011 (Y5-8 class) and 2014 (Y3/4 class) and I believe the earlier we get students paying attention to politics and understanding how the right to vote works, the more likely they will be voters.  I will always remember our local MP, Jack Luxton, visiting my class when I was in Standard 4 in 1984 to talk to us about elections - it did help that four of his grandchildren were at my school!

And I am pleased I went to this workshop as I was the only primary school voice in this small group of people, so I was able to add a new dimension to the conversation and learn some new things myself from the secondary teachers in the room.  Hopefully what we came up with will make it into The Pond for many teachers to use.

My next workshop was with Jane Gilbert from AUT on Education's complex future - what does this mean for teachers?  The room just kept on filling up for this one and spilled out into the next.... which was ok because RJHS is made up of flexible learning spaces, so the big ranchsliders were left fully open.

I chose this workshop because I felt it was quite relevant to what I am currently doing with my Master of Education focusing on Global Education Policy.  I felt this question opens up a huge chasm of questions and quandaries that we as professional educators need to consider for not only ourselves, but also for our current and future students.

Below is a Storify of tweets just from this session.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

Below are photos that I took of Jane Gilbert's slides during her rapid lecture.

Jane argued that education needs to make a rapid change as it was no longer appropriate to do a mass production line form of education (reminiscent of Yong Zhao's opinion of the sausage factory mode of education).

"We don't need another brick in the wall" industrialise education was how we were taught - but this is not appropriate for students of today or tomorrow.  What is the core role of a teacher?  How does that role relate to other teachers?

Mega trends in education:

* digital revolution
* globalisation

Mega trends in education:
* massive growth in new networked forms of knowledge
* Anthropocene

World events such as terrorist attacks,Brexit,Trump... these are upsetting world order... leads to chaos.  Chaos and disruption may provide potential alternatives.

Sardar says we're in a transitional age. A change phase:

* Complexity
* Chaos
* Contradiction

How does education policy fit here?

* "we need to get the system to perform better"
* digitisation

There is a focus on outcomes (measured in the 'old ways') & students - but the focus on teachers is yet to come.

Lots of investment in hardware (infrastructure, tools, vocab) but not on software (teachers).

The mega trends undermine the 20th Century education system. Need to look at these questions in photo.  There are all these things we are asked to do for students but haven't experienced them their selves.  The good news is no one knows the answers.

Why are they talking about things in picture?  If we don't understand human systems these'll be subverted.  Personally I believe the model in place for Communities of Learners currently is wrong with too much dictatorial influence by MOE.  This will subvert true collaboration. That's why I consider COLs as IES pig with lipstick.

System features to consider.

Also: closed & open systems.

The murmuration of starlings - modification in response to small change - interaction produces change.  Murmuration of starlings: no one is in charge. System has its own "collective intelligence" as a whole.

Dave Snowden's Cynefin Framework. See http://cognitive-edge.com 

Education is a complex system.  Things are difficult in education and therefore requires a different sort of methodology.

Great examples for simple, complicated & complex problems using the model.

What does this mean for teachers and schools and students? What is the future? Is collaboration enough?

Three things (in picture) matter to build collective intelligence.   Building collective intelligence depends on quality of elements, quality of interactions and degree of diversity

Hargreaves & Fullan - 2012, Professional Capital - Transforming Teaching in every School: what is "strong" collaboration?  Collaboration or innovation is not collecting others ideas.  Don't necessarily apply to your situation.  Strong collaboration needs collegial not congenial, critique and extension of existing ideas, push each other, thinking differently.  To achieve change we HAVE to challenge ideas, argue; conflict produces new deep thinking.   Avoid echo chambers.

Collegial collaboration - NOT congenila collaboration needed. R Evans 2012 - Building True collegiality in schools.  How do we get strong collaboration? See R. Evans (2012) bottom of picture.

Questions for us to consider in light of this workshop with Jane Gilbert - and for all teachers too.  Will reconfiguration of the role of teachers be enough? Do we need a complete rebuild?  Jane argues that some of the professional learning offered to teachers is quite basic! Need to rethink how teachers are educated.  Absolutely agree that teacher PLD must start with focus on individual cognitive growth.  And group cognitive capacity of teachers.  How might we think about "next practice" not just "best practice"?  For teachers to interact in new world order & support kids; need new PLD model that focuses on cognitive growth to create next practice.  But we have to achieve this change while keeping some aspects of the old system going.

"Historic change is like an avalanche."

As you can see there are a lot of things we need to consider about the future of our profession as educators for ourselves and our students.

After lunch (where I caught up with some  #kotuku tribe members), it was the Provocation session, where the keynote speakers provoked us.

The first speaker was Stanley Frielick and below is the blurb about Stanley from the #edchatNZ Conference website.

Dr Stanley Frielick is Director of Learning and Teaching at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) – a central role in a network of staff, students and enabling technologies that increases the capability of the university for educational development and innovation.

His diverse research interests include the ways in which ecological / biological understandings of thinking interrelate with social and digital media to create new modes of learning, and the implications of these for strategic planning and leadership. He has led several initiatives in academic development, digital media and mobile learning at AUT.

The second speaker was Kaila Colbin and her blurb from the #edchatNZ Conference website is below:

Kaila is an ambassador for SingularityU and involved in organising the first New Zealand summit. Kaila is also a curator for TEDxChristchurch, Ministry of Awesome co-founder.

​Kaila is an entrepreneur, a connector, and a person who loves to see ideas turned into action. She is a co-founder and trustee of the non-profit Ministry of Awesome, an organisation dedicated to watering the seeds of awesome in communities; and the founder and director of New Zealand social media consultancy Missing Link.

These two speakers were rapid and thought provoking.

Kaila's keynote inspired these tweets:

• Riding the exponential wave of change
• Exponential technology is not just about the computing
• In ED, are we just hanging out in the trough of disappointment? Waiting for the steep curve to amazement!
• Self-drive cars are already twice as safe per mile as humans.
• A single crash for a self-drive car immediately improves the whole fleet. Not the case with humans.
• sci-fi is really sci-non-fi!
• 35yrs of 3D printing and what do we get? Shitty models of Yoda's head
• x times as fast, at x less cost. soooo awesome!!! Jet fusion printing from HP - electronics within the printed object
• Highest prediction is 81% of jobs gone in 20 YEARS!!!
• AI always starts with base knowledge of all other AIs, people do not
• Loving "the dick factor" that @kcolbin talks about e.g. wearing technology such as Google cardboard.
• Segways failed because of "dick factor" VR Goggles mean you can't see other's eye rolling at you
• We used to teach kids to ski as the future was paved, now we have to teach kids to surf as the future is unknown
• See @richardsusskind's 'The Future of the Professions:  http://goo.gl/faLAve
• Find your Billion - book your students places to learn about exponential tech with @kcolbin  http://www.findyourbillion.co.nz/ 

Stanley's keynote inspired these tweets:

• Kia whakatomuri te haere whakamua
• Watching the Mother of all Demos from 1968 - the original YouTube How To video.
• The Dynabook looks like the forerunner to a laptop & tablet - Alan Kay DynaBook 1968
• Inspired by the history of these incredible people who gave us so many possibilities. Papert -my favourite. 
• All day I have been reminded over and over that the technology I thought was recent... well... wasn't
• Richard Brautigan poem - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
• We have so much tech but what are we actually doing with it?
• What wicked problems can we authentically engage our students with?
• key word there... authentic. surely students need to have a say? how can WE dictate that?
• The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
• highlighting disconnection. oooh, nice. are you "Whole in a connected world"? human touch - AGAIN, whanaungatanga.
• "We also need a space where we are wholly ourselves, contingent upon no one else"

After the Provocations of the keynotes, we met back up with our tribes.  #kotuku tribe had come up with the idea of #minutechange to present to the Conference later that afternoon.  So we debated this.  The first thing we needed to do was define minute so that people knew what we were talking about.

Naturally I have a wee Storify of our thinking over #minutechange:

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

WIDD = What I did differently - which links into the whole idea of #minutechange.

After nutting it out, and making a new Twitter account called @minutechange to go with our hashtag #minutechange it was time to present our proposal to the Conference and hear what other tribes had come up with.

All in all, I enjoyed the two days at the #edchatNZ Conference.  It was almost a cross between a traditional conference and an Educamp, in that it was timetabled like a traditional conference but had the flexibility of choice that comes with an Educamp, with the bonus of time to network and build a tribe to collaborate on a new idea with.

The bonus for me was that this year it was in Hamilton... and I hope the next one will be at a school that I can get to easily.

Below is a Storify of the whole of Day Two of the Conference - there are a lot of tweets... like maybe 885 tweets.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

#educampAKL 2017

On Saturday 29th July #educampAKL for 2017 was held at Papakura High School in South Auckland.

This is the link to the Google Smackdown: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mZONDq79n4LlcXrpTp8GAws2WaaGvYVtsvpQE6EW0HE/edit#slide=id.g22e30cf367_0_74

I went to learn about Drive Slides.  Drive Slides is an extension on Google Chrome.  We were asked to make a Drive Slide.  Below are the steps.

1. First of all we had to add Drive Slides as an extension to Google Chrome.
2. Then we added Save to Google Drive as an extension to Google Chrome.
3. Then we went to Google images and choose three pictures.  To save the pictures we right clicked on the pictures and hovered over Save to Google Drive and then clicked on Save image to Google Drive.
4. Once we had three pictures in our Google Drive, we went to Recent and then held down the Shift button and clicked on our three images and saved them in a new folder.  
5. After this we clicked on the Drive Slides extension up in the extension line.

Here is my practice of doing Drive Slides:

I also learnt about Extensity, which enables you to turn extensions in Google Chrome on and off so you can improve the speed of your computer.

I then went to a workshop about using Voice Dictation on devices led by Jason, who showed us how he can write a text by voice, including punctuation.  I knew that Google Search and Docs and the like respond to voice.... but I learnt how to write a text message on my Samsung Galaxy 6 which will be helpful.

This then morphed into Jason showing us his Swivl robot, which he uses to record his teaching.  A Swivl can be bought from Si-Tech (who has the NZ licence) for approximately $750.  You put your phone/tablet on the Swivl and wear a bluetooth device on a lanyard.  This allows you to voice activate the device to record your teaching and the Swivl will follow you around the class as you move.  A Swivl account is free and will upload the video automatically to the cloud.  You can then share a link or embed it into your blog or website for students to access. 


Jason uses his swivel to 'flip' his classroom so his students can refer back to lessons if they need to remember something and absent students can use the videos to catch up.  Jason said that it is also a useful way to record yourself for appraisal or to help you reflect on your teaching.

#edchatNZ Conference 2016 Reflection of Day One

One of the amazing things that has come out of the National led government killing off our former Advisory Service is how teachers started doing professional development for themselves - for teachers, by teachers.  Instead of having advisers who would run courses or possibly even visit you in your school to support a school wide PLD opportunity, we now have the online Science Hub and your school has to be in a contract to get any support for literacy or numeracy.

Into the vacuum came EduIgnites, Educamps and Twitter chats.  #edchatnz was started in 2012 by Danielle Myburgh aka @MissDtheTeacher as she felt isolated as a beginning teacher.  Danielle calls herself an introvert, and you can see her nerves as she stands in front of a large group of educators on a winter's morning in the brand new auditorium of the brand new Rototuna Junior High School, but she is also a passionate teacher who wanted to do the best for her students and so reached out to teachers across New Zealand and beyond.  She established #edchatnz, a fortnightly chat at 8:30pm on a Thursday for Kiwi teachers (and beyond). 

From that many other chats emerged for subject areas like English, Science and Maths... and a leaders' chat too.  At ULearn (a conference held in the first week of October by Core Education) there has been a Twitter dinner and this is a place where the #edchatnz participants often meet properly for the first time face to face, if they haven't already at an Educamp.  #edchatnz has also had two conferences, by teachers for teachers, in 2014 and this most recent one at Rototuna Junior High School in northern Hamilton on Friday 12th and Saturday 13th of August.  At $30 it will be the cheapest but possibly the most inspiring PLD you could do!!

There were so many people there from near and far.  Some of the participants came in large groups from their school, some in small groups and some were, as Danielle called us, Lone Nuts.  There were principals, teachers, support staff (two I knew already were a librarian and an IT technician), professional learning advisors, tertiary lecturers and some education industry personnel.

The conference was held at a school, starting on a Friday for a purpose.  Firstly, at the registration desk, after registering and being delegated a tribe (explained later), we were referred to some students from Rototuna Junior High School (aka RJHS) to be our tour guides and take photos on our phones of us in groups with an #edchatnz frame.  As I was registering I hear another person say her name, and I recognised it.  So I turned around and said hello.  What was even better was Melanie (yes, same name!) was also in my tribe.  Anyway, her is our selfie taken by one of the students.  (Is that still a selfie?)


So we gathered in the hall where Danielle did a welcome along with the principal of RJHS, Fraser Hill.  We heard some background from Danielle about how she established #edchatnz, her journey and the purpose of the conference: #possibilities.  We heard from Fraser about the ethos of his school and a bit of the journey in his welcome.

Afterwards we went to meet our tribe.  My tribe was #kotuku - they were all named after native New Zealand birds, which was cool.  Our tribe leader was Alex (@ariaporo22) who I have known for a couple of years though #edchatnz, Educamps, EduIgnites and ULearns, so it was lovely to have a friendly face.  Melanie, who I met at reception, @michaelteacher and @MSimmsNZ were people I had conversed with through #edchatnz on Twitter or through NZ Teachers on Facebook and were also in #kotuku.  There was also a high school English teacher who we didn't see much because she also had her school production in full swing and two teachers from a school north of Hamilton who were still getting to grips with Twitter, but soon recognised me from the NZ Teachers Facebook page (I'm on it far too much).

Soon it was time to head off to our first workshop.  There were also tours of RJHS, which would have been great to go on, because the place looked amazing, but I decided to get out of my comfort zone and go and learn more about Google Sites.  I have tried them once before a couple of years ago, but I found them rather frustrating.  And then I heard that Google was dumping the whole thing.

But now Google is revamping them.  Currently only certain schools have access to Google Sites, kind of as guinea pigs as they work out the bugs.  @steve_trotter was having a few technical difficulties with his laptop and the network, as I did too, but I brought a back up with me, so it was a slow start getting going.  We had a tu-tu with Google Sites under a username for a school he works at and that was interesting.  I thought it was an improvement over the previous Google Sites, but it still has a long way to go before I will be excited about using it.  There are still a few things that I did not find aesthetically pleasing, did not have enough choice or were fiddly to achieve.... but the bugs are still being worked out.

After lunch with the #kotuku tribe, there was a mix and mingle in the auditorium with a game of meet people Bingo.  This was how far I got in the time set.

We were also made aware of a set of challenges for us.  But to be honest, I was so busy meeting people, figuring out where I was and making sense of it all I forgot about these challenges... but some people did really well at them:

Challenges

Are you ready to be an educational explorer? Complete these missions to open up the possibilities for yourself, your tribe and the others you interact with during the conference. Share your mission progress on #edchatNZ and check out what others have achieved so far as well.

New to Twitter Challenges

• Help someone sign up to twitter and send their first tweet
• Share a link that supports a presenter’s idea
• Share something you were challenged by

Asking Questions

• Tweet a question that made you think
• Ask a question of a presenter
• Write a question on a post it and place it on someone else’s property so they will find it later

Connections

• Meet people from at least 10 different towns/cities
• Chat to someone from Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and an Outside Provider
• Get a Tribe Grelfie that shows something you all have in common
• Get a Tribe Grelfie with the Rototuna eel
• Make something with your tribe to represent yourselves to the rest of the conference (totem pole, secret handshake, sculpture, human pyramid…)

Have Fun

• Make a sculpture with your food
• Play a song loudly from your device that shows how you are feeling as you finish a workshop
• Share one of your favourite edu quotes
• Bust out your favourite dance move
• Quote Star Wars in an educational discussion

Get Critical

• Be the Devil’s Advocate: ask a question from a different perspective to make people think deeper and differently
• Recommend a book that someone could read to learn more about a topic
• Connect someone with a person who could help move their ideas forward
• Give someone deep feedback about their idea/plans

Then it was off to the second session of workshops.  I went to a session run by the students of RJHS.  During this session the students explained the vision and expectations of the school.  They explained how the structure of their timetable worked, how they achieve credits and modules, and how they design their learning with a mentor teacher.  The students are expected to be aware of and track their own learning.  They also set us some tasks to do that they had done.  These tasks required us to use team work, think out of the box and communicate - and many more key competencies, which their programme revolves around.

The first task involved a set of nails.  We had to balance on one nail all the rest of the nails.  The first three photos below are our failed attempts in our group.

Below left is my attempt to sneak off another group what the finished product would look like.  Even then we couldn't do it and one of the students had to show us before we could do it ourselves, bottom right.  The student who showed us admitted their teacher had to give them lots of help.

There was also an activity with Lego.  Every group was given a box with Lego in it.  Every box had the same pieces, the same colour as each other.  Again we had to work in a group.  One person had to go to a table and look hard at the example made up and then come back to the group.  They had to tell the group what to do to make it, but they were not allowed to touch it.  After a couple of minutes, the students allowed a second group member to go up and look hard at the example and come back to tell us what to do.  This happened probably six more times, but even then a student felt the need to correct our group.  This was another great example on how to use the key competencies as a learning task.

So here we were getting all the pieces out and starting with the most memorable bits.  @ariaporo22 was telling us what to do first.

As you can see, we had to put on and take off a few times, as each new communicator picked up something the previous one had missed.  Also the students came and set us straight too when we were off tangent.

On the left is our final product, and on the right is the original model.  I think we did pretty well.  It was a fabulous oral language activity, not to dissimilar to barrier games for oral language.

Below are some photos of the things the students talked about in relation to their learning journey.

Next it was time for the students to go home and we headed for the auditorium where we were asked to put the chairs into groups of four and sit down for a face to face Twitter #edchatnz.  My group failed to hear some of the instructions, so stuffed it all up, but it was fun to move around and talk to different people on the questions set.

We had afternoon tea and then gathered in our tribes again with the goal to create something as a group to share with the conference the next day and to hopefully contribute to The Pond.

The day ended very late, and it was after 5pm when I really just had to go off to attempt to rescue a cat (that's another story elsewhere!)... and that is really all this blog post could possibly handle apart from me adding the Storify of pretty much every tweet about Day One of the #edchatnz 2016 Conference to the end of this post.  Day Two is another post in the writing....

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

#edblognz ULearn15 Blogger Selfie Challenge #cenz

If at Ulearn - Find a blogger you admire, shake their hand and take a selfie with them to post on your blog. Then find a new blogger and do the same! If you’re feeling really generous buy them a coffee! Write about it too!

This last week I went to ULearn15 at Sky City Convention Centre in Auckland.  This is my fifth ULearn in a row, and at each one I have found inspiration and met amazing people and reconnected with old friends from many areas of my life. 

This year the networking was awesome.  I got to meet bloggers and tweeters and inspirational educators who I've been connecting with for up to four years (the amount of time I have been on Twitter as I joined at the end of ULearn11).  This is how I have built up and widened my Personal Learning Network and become a connected educator through Twitter and going to ULearn, Educamps and EduIgnites.

On Wednesday night I attended the Twitter Dinner.  There were about 55 people there, not all of whom were attending ULearn.  @digitallearnin organised the evening and had us interacting with a game of Twitter Bingo, as you can see below.

First up for the selfie challenge was @st3ph007 or StephT who has the blog Four Seasons in One Kiwi.  I've always really enjoyed reading her blog posts.  They challenge me in some of my thinking.  Often I agree, at times I do not.  @st3ph007 has also supported @kerriattamatea in her establishment of the #BFC630NZ quick education chat each week day morning of term which I have participated in on occasion.  @st3ph007 also is a regular participant in #edchatnz and has been known to put her wisdom out on Facebook pages I frequent too.  It was fabulous to finally meet Steph and hear her passion for education in the flesh.

One of the Breakouts I went to at ULearn15 was presented by @Cherie59789095 and it was about networks and clusters, a hot topic currently.  It took me a few minutes to click on to the fact that I had been interacting with the presenter on Twitter for quite a while as I wasn't able to click into the online resource for about 10 or so minutes.  I had the opportunity to have a long chat with Cherie later in the evening after the Gala Dinner and I was thrilled to make the face to face connection with such an amazing leader.

During Brunch on the last day @vanschaijik who is also known as Sonya, sat beside me, and soon after we were joined by @mrehu.  Sonya is one of the admins for #edblognz and is a big driver behind TeachMeetNZ, a virtual PLD meeting space.  Sonya has also been a connected educator in many other ways too, which you can check out at http://sonyavanschaijik.com/.

I have been following @mrehu for nearly two years, I think, and at the Gala Dinner I met one of his teachers, @KNgarangione, who had come to ULearn15 with a group of the staff and she raved about working with him.  So it was a bonus to sit down with Maurice for a few minutes and shoot the breeze about our highlights at the conference.

And lastly, after a false start the afternoon before where our timing was out, @mjbuckland and I finally caught up and had that f2f meet up and chat about the conference this year and in the past, Twitter and the "take homes" we have. 

Alas, I failed to meet any new bloggers at ULearn15, but if you are a fairly new blogger and you are reading this and would like to help me out with a virtual meeting, or a f2f if you are in Hamilton, Cambridge or Te Awamutu, drop me a line at @melulater or through the comments.

It was great to meet all these people in the flesh for the first time this year, but also great to meet up with many other awesome educators that I have been meeting over the last few years, especially since 2012's ULearn.

Twitter as a Personal Learning Network for Teachers

I joined Twitter at the end of ULearn11, the same day as I started this blog.  It was a huge leap, but after three days of attending keynotes and breakouts and hearing about how other educators were using various websites, blogging and Twitter in their classrooms and their own personal learning I thought I'd make the leap.

You can see my first blog ULearn11 - learning, discovering, trying it out for myself to see the beginning of my blogging journey nearly three years ago.

I started off in Twitter very slow.  It was fits and bursts, slowly finding people to follow.  Going to Educamp in early November 2011 helped.  It gave me the opportunity to see how even though we were in the same room we could communicate not only verbally but virtually and with people elsewhere in the country who could not be there, therefore widening the discussion and learning possibilities.

The Rugby World Cup and the elections in 2011 were other opportunities to have a blat on Twitter too.

But that first year, through till ULearn 2012, I felt more of a voyeur than a participant.  At ULearn 2012 I began to use Twitter much more.  During breakouts I would have my laptop with me and this made it easy for me to write my notes directly into my blog, go straight to the websites discussed and so on.  But in the keynotes I struggled with my laptop on my knee in a confined space and was often running short on battery.  I had recently purchased a cheap and nasty tablet, so I started tweeting on that to take notes of the keynote.  That worked a treat.  It meant later that I was able to go back to my tweets (and those of others I had retweeted) to reflect on what was said and blog it as part of my reflections.

Sometime in early 2013 I discovered #edchatNZ on every second Thursday night, and I started getting involved in Twitter chats.  This is a great chat because it encompasses teachers and non-teachers from all education sectors and really gets some great debate going on a variety of teaching, learning, professional and educationally political matters.

I've also fallen into other chats at various points, but this one I Storified below I accidentally started one Thursday night that wasn't an #edchatNZ night but got people talking:  Sadly Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media landscape and none of my Storifies exist anymore.  😭😭😭😭

The key phrase that has emerged in the last few years has been PLN or Personal Learning Network.  As teachers we are developing these networks, communicating with a range of teachers we may otherwise not have encountered. 

We talk on Twitter, and sometimes Facebook through various networks, and sometimes we meet face to face at Educamps, Eduignite, ULearn, ConnectED, or at some other form of professional development.  Sometimes we meet up because we've actually developed friendships.

And #edchatNZ is actually hosting its first face to face unconference in August.  Check out this poster and go to the BlogSpot for more info or just ask on Twitter using #edchatNZ to find out more:

I talk to a range of primary, intermediate and secondary teachers as well as facilitators on Twitter, principals too, and sometimes BOT members of various schools.  I am unsure how many ECE teachers are engaged, but it would be great to get more involved.

But I also communicate with politicians, sports people, media, comedians, musicians, actors and many other amazingly funny, creative, thought provoking, interesting Twerps and Tweachers.  I may have started off slow, but I am now over 11,000 tweets into this journey and it is amazing.

Kevin Honeycutt (@kevinhoneycutt) said at ULearn12 that Twitter has your back.  I can say that you can put something out to your PLN and they will respond and an amazing conversation will be thrown back to you.  This happened to me in March, accidentally again, when I posted The Classroom Environment - what makes a class attractive?  What followed when I posted that blog up was four hours on a Friday night of people sharing great artwork and project ideas from their classroom walls!!

I saved so many of those pictures for inspiration later on. 

And that is the great thing about a PLN is that they inspire, advise, invigorate, spark new thinking, refocus, give a different point of view - and I can do it from the comfort of my bed in my pjs for free!!!