Being Connected in Jammies

I spent the weekend in my jammies.  I didn’t go anywhere. I didn’t cook.  I ate out of the fridge. I went to bed early and slept late. I didn’t watch much TV–even the Olympics. I talked to hardly anyone on the phone. I played hermit, basically.

A hermit with connections. . .

Because you see, I also:

  • joined a new collaborative blog, Cooperative Catalyst, that went live today with a welcome message (first posts tomorrow)
  • co-wrote the vision and mission for Cooperative Catalyst on a google doc with two folks I’ve never met f2f and one I have
  • Skyped on Saturday with the people collaborating with me on this new blog (Chad Sansing, Adam Burk and Aaron Eyler.  I have decided each is brilliant in his own way and I am absolutely honored to be able to listen to them think.
  • Created a Jog on http://jogtheweb.com for my parent workshop Tuesday night
  • Talked to at least half of my kids on wikimail
  • Spent an hour or so wordsmithing the welcome post for the new blog Cooperative Catalyst with another of the contributors, Adam Burk. I loved doing that, as working together to make the words say JUST exactly what we wanted them to stretched my way of looking at writing and using words
  • Shared my first post for Cooperative Catalyst with my collaborators and got to read theirs before they are posted.  We all took the same topic and yet each of our posts is so very different.
  • Worked on the eTeacher course I am taking with others in my county, posting to the forums and responding to others’ posts
  • Skyped on Sunday with Mike Fisher and Becky Fisher to finalize our plans for our ASCD presentation this coming weekend
  • Used email to plan Monday morning’s math class with the second grade teacher
  • Skyped on Sunday with one of Dean Shareski’s students who is working with my students this semester on their wikis.
  • Worked with Glen Bull and others at UVA to plan for several of my 5th graders to visit a UVA class Monday afternoon to see Hod Lipson from Cornell demonstrate a variation on the digital fabrication lab that I have in my classroom.
  • Worked with the same group to plan a field trip for Thursday for fifth graders to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony of UVA’s Children’s Engineering Lab
  • Tweeted with several folks and caught up with some friends I haven’t seen online for a while
  • Started a new personal blog where my goal is to be brief  If…Then
  • Collaborated with several teachers from my county to create a new wiki, Diigo Does IT, for us to become competent at and share our uses of Diigo together, and finally,
  • Blogged here

So while the first paragraph may have sounded like I had a lazy weekend, I had an incredibly cerebral one that was full of connections, learning, sharing and meaning making.

I realized how very connected I am and how much I want to support my kids making connections and learning from others all over the world as well.

How very different my life is from even five years ago, now that I have a PLN online. I appreciate you all.

2 thoughts on “Being Connected in Jammies

  1. And I appreciate you. I am amazed at how much I am constantly learning from you. This blog speaks volumes of where education should be headed. Thanks for sharing. I tend to not post much but I do appreciate all who are part of my PLN; you folks are making me a better teacher.

  2. I had got a desire to begin my business, but I didn’t earn enough amount of money to do it. Thank God my dude proposed to use the loan. Thence I received the financial loan and realized my old dream.

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