Shift to the Future

I have always been a highly social person, an extravert I suppose.  Those personality ass Technorati Tags: relationships , opportunities , connected , friends essments always put me into that sort of category.  I’m a Yellow-Red for instance.  I’ve made it a priority to reach out internally and externally to people like me and different from me, within the public and private sectors, to build relationships, share ideas, dream, lament, argue or debate, etc.  I knew I was pretty well connected but this recent transition period, sabbatical of sorts, has really highlighted how my network really works. So many people reached out through LinkedIn, Twitter, and email asking to get together for coffee, lunch, and to see how I was doing.  They shared such positive and affirming comments with me which really helped with getting through this period and to help me figure out what’s next.  I had well connected friends reaching inside the organizations they work for to se...

I am still amazed by how quickly things change.  I remember joining Twitter about 3 or more years ago.  @chrkennedy , @gary_kern , and I thought we’d give it a go.  I really wasn’t sure what to enter in response to “What’s happening?”.  My Twitter account remained pretty dormant until about the middle of 2009 and even then took probably six months for me to really “get it”.  I think it’s easier to see the value now since it’s become so popular.  In part one of this post series I attempted to show how you can build your professional learning network (PLN) using Twitter .  In this post I write about another popular tool for building your PLN – LinkedIn ( wikipedia article ). Here are a few introductory snippets from my LinkedIn profile : LinkedIn is sort-of like a Facebook for professional networking.  Rather than friends though, you make connections with contacts.  You and your contacts and millions of other users include as much detai...

I was in a lunch & learn session today with the management group in our District.  We were chatting about doing some professional growth planning and I suggested that the group look at the new ways.  Well, after a brief conceptual overview of building a personal / professional learning network (PLN), I got the job of sharing at the next lunch & learn to show how digital tools are used by professionals around the world for that very purpose.  This blog post (and a second one ) materialized for me while running on the treadmill at the gym after work and will serve as the outline and guide for the lunch & learn.  I hope that I write this in such a way that it is useful to teachers, principals, and other professionals wanting to embrace the new ways of building a PLN.  My definition for a PLN is: “a group of people who know stuff that I need to know and who might benefit from knowing stuff that I know” So, essentially a PLN forms through people you fi...