Educon is again blowing me away this year.   The rich conversations, the access to incredible talent and thinkers in education, the informal late night discussions that occur all across the city of Philadelphia, and the efficiency with which the SLA students run the weekend all contribute to an exh

I agree that the written curriculum of a school does not signify the total learning experience of the school. As he comments in his post, a cooperative relationship between all stakeholders, and a recognition of the importance of relevance or authenticity frames the actual learning experience. I need to bear this in mind when I stress about Saskatchewan curriculum and my own system's fixation with measurable outcomes.

This is a powerful image. I should print this out and post it in our staffroom.

After her first year teaching history in a public high school in the District, Jamie Josephson was exhausted and plagued by self-doubt. Teaching had been more grueling than she ever expected. Law school began to sound appealing.

Then she stumbled onto Twitter. In the vast social network on the Web, she discovered a community of mentors offering inspiration, commiseration and classroom-tested lesson plans.

I've been away from my lap top too much I think. My work flow has shifted to my Blackberry and tablet. I like the shift, but as you all know, it has resulted in some compromises. My Android tablet's apps have not quite met the challenge of posting to Posterous. I still like the way my Chrome app picks up text to embed into my Posterous posts. I have a work around (there's always one isn't there?) but it is not elegant.

My Twitter feed has become such a torrent that the sipping from a fire hydrant analogy first suggested by Dean Shareski is now inadequate. Conversation on Twitter has become rare. Direct messages have virtually stopped. Replies are also becoming uncommon.

I stick with it though. As Emma Brown writes, it is a vast social network of potential mentors. I am genuinely connected to my professional discourse. That was particularly true in my first years. I suppose Twitter is partly a victim of its success. It led me to a number of other social sites that more nearly meat my need for a community of purpose. These other channels compete for my attention.

My school division has established its own limited channels, emulating the wider network. I've made some investment in these networks. I gave Yammer a serious try, but now I've let that lapse. Google+ has now caught my attention. I think it holds promise so I want to nurture my network there too. All this pulls me away from Twitter quite a bit.

I think Twitter has become the backbone of my social networking. It might serve as the nerve center for my cloud communications except with the web there is really no centralized nervous system. Sometimes I don't even believe my own brain is the center!