It’s been awhile.
I was one of the original five TechLearing bloggers, along with Miguel Guhlin, Terry Freedman, Wes Fryer, and David Warlick. I’m rejoining the TechLearning blog as of today, and I join a group of equally talented individuals, a group that as you will see shortly, will contain some new voices, and of course, some very interesting ones.
Blogging for me started like it does for everyone. The new found ability to publish ideas, to test your thoughts against others, to have others recognize value in what you had to say, was of course energizing and empowering. Like any blogger, I had to overcome the fear of pushing the submit button and dealing with the opposing comment or comments, but that was part of it, part of the intellectual challenge that comes from testing yourself against others in open discussion. Like any blogger, I read the ideas of others, engaged in commenting, and that discourse served to deepen and test my own beliefs, which in turn fueled my own professional growth.
But over time, it just wasn’t enough for me. It just wasn’t. Other social networks emerged that diverted energy (I didn’t say it but you know which one), more joined in on the fray, and the overwhelming noise of the massive growth of blogging and energy required to engage and stay fine-tuned and tapped-in was too much. Add the new responsibilities of a new and complex job, and well, see ya later….
But I’m back.
And to be perfectly frank and honest, I need to get back in blogging shape (I can hear many of you laughing at that statement for obvious reasons). Returning to this is surprisingly difficult, sort of awkward, and filled with many of the emotions of that first post.
Nah.
So, my contributions to this space and to my colleagues, and to you, will be based on some new experiences, and focused on what I will contend are essential issues for discussion, and for action. That has to be part of this, at least for me. It’s not worth doing otherwise. So I'll do my best to provide some ideas on actionable next steps.
I’ll be writing about professional development but within the larger context of organizational development. I’ll write about the changing nature of media and what I think it means for education, and the how the increasing complexity of that media impacts how we interact with it, and how we influence the message itself, with a very obvious nod to Marshall McLuhan. I’ll be writing about the need for being replicable and what that means for an organization, its teachers, and its students. I’ll do some spectrum posts where I present the two ends and you decide where you stand. I’ll be considering literacy, skills, and fluency, and kids, and pedagogy. And most importantly, I’ll try to give some practical actionable suggestions that result from the consideration of those topics.
And I won’t be writing about Twitter.
Now that wasn't so bad...
