Following school on Friday September 27, I headed to LaGuardia and flew to Atlanta. Saturday morning I made my way to the school for the daylong workshop. I have some transportation stories, but that isn't the focus of this post. Should you see me in person, and be curious, feel free to ask me to tell you.
First off -- omg what beautiful facilities! Gorgeous grounds, attractive architecture, and well-kept grounds. Our group was in the middle school building. The classroom was a double room that could be subdivided with a partition made up of whiteboard panels. Each "half room" by itself would have been larger than my high school room with 32 desks crammed in.
I arrived a bit late (see my reference to transportation issues, above) and things had already started. Jill was running things. The rest of the participants were other T3 instructors #t3learns and consultants, many of whom I knew from various conferences and events, mostly that annual T3 International conference. The morning topic centered on twitter, and how it might be used with classes and teachers. I don't think classroom use is particularly relevant to me -- my school does not allow students to carry cell phones or similar mobile communication devices. With my population, I think that's a good thing.
One of the uses that was intriguing was the idea of crowdsourcing conference notes. By sharing tweets at a conference with others, I can get a taste of what may have been happening in sessions I couldn't attend. By sharing our twitter handle on our conference name tags, it could be easy to get feedback from people. The key is to find an appropriate hashtag to filter through the, often loud, background hum of twitter. I think that will always be a limiting factor for me. More on that later.
The other major topic covered was blogging. I've been trying to blog lately, having been encouraged by a friend to record impressions of some of the things going on around me. I think reflection is a good thing, and writing a blog, even if some entries never get published, is a good way to formally reflect in a concrete way. That's something that one of my professors at Lehman College, Serigne Gningue strongly suggested I do many years ago. At the time I just said I don't have time, and he pulled out notebooks to show me how he made time almost daily to write at least a paragraph of reflections.
So, here it is, a week later. I'm not at the point that Dr. Gningue suggested, of writing every day. I do find that the software at blogger makes it easy to start a draft with a few thoughts, and save. I've only published four items since I began this blog in September. That's okay by me. I don't feel the need to publish. I have several other items in draft mode. Some I hope to come back and complete (as this one which I began a week ago). Others, maybe will remain as seeds of ideas, only for me.
As for twitter, for a few days after the workshop I was paying more attention to it. But it doesn't seem such an efficient medium for me. I like seeing the daily math puzzles from MAA, and I like the occasional updates from MfA. I like getting music updates from WFUV. I like hearing from friends who post a few things now and again. But, looking at my twitter feed more often also made me realize how much I dislike the tweeters who feel the need to tweet dozens and dozens of times a day. I realized that there was one person in particular who I was simply ignoring -- tweet overload had made me filter him away. Once I realized I was doing that, I also went in and unfollowed him.
So that's the idea I'm trying to understand about twitter and me. I think it's the same way I view conversation from people. I think silence can be a good thing. And so can talking. But I'm trying to understand where my balancing point is.
No comments:
Post a Comment