Moved Blog Site & New Address

Edutechational Ponderments

Moving blog

I have decided to move my blog.  I will post that url as soon as I get it up and settled.  I will be using annelisewojo in my professional online community and woitulewicz for my personal online community.  Since I tied this blog to the email address I will be using for personal use, I will be moving.  It makes sense in my head.  I think this will help me keep my accounts straight, not only for blogging, but email, flickr, and everything else out there.  I really do see the two worlds as separate.   

New blog url coming soon!   Toodles.

Whose thoughts are these?

Whose thoughts are they anyway? What thoughts? Everyone's. Where are the original ideas? Who is writing authentic original ideas? As I continue my journey and learning path led by blogs and twitter I am now wondering what ideas are my own and which ones are merely ideas of others. As we learn, do the ideas become our own as we express them, or are they only ideas of others we pass on? Maybe it doesn't even matter anymore. Do I care if it is my idea or someone else’s?

I think about these things lately as I am trying to find my own place, with my own identity, thoughts and passions out here in the blogosphere. I am certainly very passionate about my job as a technology director in K12 education. I am passionate about making a difference in the lives of children and doing everything I can to help them receive the education they need for success. My excitement is compounded with each new blog and set of ideas I read. I want to share with the world, but the only world I have yet to share with is out here……in the blogosphere world of the edutech…social media variety. The others aren’t quite ready for it. Many aren’t there yet. They just don’t get it yet. This is where I want to shout to the world, my friends, neighbors, and most of all educators I work with how much they have to soon get it or be left behind!

So now I wonder, when I do start shouting………whose ideas will they be and does it matter?

Learning=Addictive=Desktop Chaos

The tools and information out here are never ending.  I have not yet figured out best methods for managing the amount of input coming at me when I am surfing.  I start with a simple peek at Twitter.  I only have 50 people listed that I follow, many of whom appear to be well known bloggers in the edutech realm.  Everyone has their own blog loaded with information.  So now one click leads to another and another.  I open in a new window because I want to be sure I go back and finish reading the content on the original page. Within a very short time I end up with 10-15-20 open windows.  It's my way of managing (or shall I call it lack of managing) doing something with the open window content.  This might include absorbing it, filing it, emailing info to staff at my school, posting to twitter something I find, adding to my own blog, or bookmarking.   Or, worse yet, leaving them open and then finally needing to clean up my desktop and all the open windows by closing them all to start over. 

I need to find a better way to manage the overwhelming amount of content, ideas, blogs, website, tips, thoughts, tools and data that I am trying to make my way through.  I have only recently started developing an online presence.  It is addictive.  I am learning constantly.  I need to learn to better manage sifting through content so that my screen isn't always looking like this picture not so long after logging on.  A quick peek at Twitter ends up looking like the above.  Is this a good thing?  If so, why does my brain feel so full but unfed?  It feels like I'm eating with a hole in my stomach.  I'm never satiated.  I want more more more.  I want to know it all.  I want to read and view thoughts of everyone.  I want to keep filling up.  Too bad we need to sleep.  

I'm going to take this bottomless pit of a brain out to my hot tub to try to get out of learning mode, for at least a couple of hours.  Until I decide to take a quick peek at Twitter.....and so the saga will then continue.  

Only One Online Personality

Just watched this video on the Bamboo Project site.   I've been trying to figure out how to make my way in this web world and best distinguish between my professional and personal presence. This video makes the claim there there is no difference and we now have one personality in the online world.  Everything one does is part of this record and one needs to be careful.  Some very good points he makes here and further good resource links with information on managing one's online reputation.  

We need to be sure kids are being taught how critical it is to manage their online social life in an appropriate manner.  I don't think it is yet something they are considering enough.  That is evident when you look at some of the things you can find out there on social networking sites, utube, etc.  I think it will be important that we are teaching this very concept to our students, and even more so that teachers and administrators are acting as good role models with their online presence.  

Shirkey's Cognitive Surplus

When everybody comes, I want to be there!  I'm looking forward to getting the book by Clay Shirkey that I have read about on many posts, Here Comes Everybody:  The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  It should be waiting for me when I get home from my work break.  That is a break from doing everyday work, to working on my own professional development.  I've had the time to think, reflect, read, contribute, publish, and formulate ideas that will help guide my decisions in my role as technology director.  

I know I have been guilty myself of wondering where everyone finds the time to make meaningful contributions to their blogs, tweets, websites, video uploads, photo libraries and pod casts.  After watching this short video clip of Clay Shirkey, I realize I was off-track in my thinking.  His talk is about cognitive surplus and relates it to time that in the past was spent on watching TV.  We all need to become more than consumers.  Thought provoking talk.  Take a listen.......

I won't be giving up TV watching but it's a good reminder about the time that can be soaked up in doing so.  He says, "It's better to do something, than nothing."  How many times have you watched an entire show and said to yourself, "why did I just waste my time?!"  I know I have definitely done that and wish I could go back in time.  I wonder if in 10 years from now, I'll be saying the same thing about mindless posts, publications and creations.......or is there not such a thing as mindless.......?

Personal versus Professional

Today I am trying to decide where the line is between one's personal and professional web presence.  With so many of these tools tying together between accounts, what is the best way to separate the two?  Should I keep a separate accounts for Picaso, Flickr, uTube, Blogger, and many more?  Or do they all intermingle?  What are best practices here?  How does one balance this web presence between family/friends and professionally related publishing?   

Advice anyone?

If I don't get advice, then I'll have to start posting silly pictures like this slideshow i put together for my husband on my week away in solitude.  Maybe getting a bit photobooth slaphappy.