Shift to the Future

It used to be so easy to be smart.  Seriously, all you had to do was learn lots of trivia, know how to do a variety of things, be able to quickly recall information, facts, and figures, and people figured you knew it all.  Well folks, the world has changed.  The Internet knows a lot more stuff than you or I do or ever will and it’s doubling every 18 months or so.  We must learn together to become wise!  Why then is it that a lot of learning continues to be isolated and static? How can individuals possibly compete with Youtube, TED, Twitter, Google, Wolfram Alpha, and many other sources that we can now hold in our hands to access whenever we need or want to? I participated in a conference led by George Couros with about 100 principals/vice principals ( #cpvpa ) from #sd43 .  Some of the deep thinking and resources shared can be seen here .  I’ve worked with quite a number of these folks over the years supporting their learning and progress with techn...

I committed to writing a weekly blog post back in December 2009 and haven’t missed one yet.  Some weeks, actually many, I get to the weekend and have no idea what to write about.  My wife Shelley and will kick blog titles around while drinking our morning coffees (she blogs weekly as well over here ) until something resonates.  She came up with the idea to write about motivation today and I scooped it (she’s a sharing person). mo·ti·va·tion /moh-tuh-vey-shuhn / noun 1. the act or an instance of motivating , or providing with a reason to act in a certain way. Synonyms: motive, inspiration, inducement, cause, impetus. 2. the state or condition of being motivated : We know that these students have strong motivation to learn. Blogging for me is an outlet for my ideas.  My blog posts do not attract a lot of comments but my blog averages around 350-400 visitors from around the world with 1000-1400 page views per week.  This audience or readership de...

I received an email a few months ago from Twitter saying that I was four years old.  I signed up for Twitter way back in March 2007.  At the time I didn’t really have a clue what to do with the prompt “What’s happening?” and mostly forgot about Twitter until sometime in 2009.  A few colleagues had started to really use and benefit from Twitter and they kept nudging me to get on board.  I did and the rest is history… There are many different tools for various modes of networking around media and medium for video, bookmarking / tagging, blogging, socializing, sharing, business connecting, presenting, etc.  People often join social networking sites like Twitter as part of a workshop or learning series only to rarely or never return.  In my experience, the sign-up numbers vs active users are quite different.  Twitter is definitely growing though as evident in this 2010 graph: I just gave a talk and hands-on session at the BC ASBO annual meeting in...

I wrote my first blog post Feb. 8, 2007 “ my43, a place to learn and work ” (a pretty lame first post I might add) using our District’s portal (my43).  I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to write about per se but knew I had to figure out this blogging thing if I was to be able speak about it authentically.  My blog didn’t have an interesting name, it was just “Brian Kuhn’s Blog”.  I wrote about whatever I felt like, periodically, and related to my work or interests.  I wasn’t highly engaged in my blog and it wasn’t a priority for me. In late December 2009 I decided to make a change.  I signed up for a Google blog (blogger/blogspot) and called my blog “Shift to the Future” and focused on technology, education, and futuristics.  I committed to writing weekly and purposefully – my first new post, written Dec. 29, 2009 was Disruption is coming .  Why do I blog now?  Here are they key reasons: to think out loud and transparently about novel or...

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...