I am starting to become more conscious of themes that are running through my life. Some are constant themes, which I would call values that include my family time, appreciation of people's talents (strength based), and empathy towards people's situations. I also have themes which have come into my life and gone quickly with little or no thought. Then there are themes which come into my life and intrigue me to the point of connecting many things in my life together.
I currently have the later theme running through my life with Personal Learning Networks. There have been many people who have asked me how do I fit all that I do into my life. I am a Learning Support Teacher, Assistant Varsity Boys Basketball Coach, President of a Charter School Board, Teaching Grad Class Learning Communities, finishing my administration license in a years time, and, most importantly, a husband and father of one and soon to be two sons (just found out that exciting news tonight). The first time I was asked this was around 3 years ago, and at that time I did not have nearly as much going on as today. I can remember that day vividly...I looked at a good friend of mine and gave the nervous giggle. That's right I said giggle-which many of you can probably relate to. I did not think much of it at the time, but it came back to me when another person asked me the same question in a different way, months later. I thought everyone was doing a lot of different things outside of their classrooms. I reflected on why did I feel this way, and I did not have to look much farther than outside my home. My wife is my rock, and she not only supports me but encourages what I do within the education profession. I do not feel stressed or stretched on one of my core values of family time, and this has made my life easier. However, when families expand, it continues to get harder to build learning networks with the amount of time in a day. This theme has been lingering around for the past 3 years, until recently when it came charging to the forefront of my life.
My thought partner, Michael McCabe (@KornerstoneGuy) is a non-stop learner and educator. He has a knack for engaging in conversations and moving ideas forward. Last year he went on a nation-wide-tour getting coached up for the opening of a charter school. He began to really build his network as he was on his journey and he brought back the great discussions which he had over that time. He was fully invested in twitter and began to educate me on the benefits of it. I began to get plugged-in with many of the people with whom he was in contact with. This, without me knowing it, began to build my national PLN. Reflecting back, I had no idea what was going on, but I did know that the conversations I was having, and the like minded people I was finding, really started to stoke up the fire inside me. There are so many great people around this nation who truly care about educating our youth and our future.
With my constant thoughts and excitements about twitter, I had two other media experiences that have helped shape my thinking at this time. The first was a Ted talk by Matt Cutts ( http://bit.ly/md0PY5 ). He has a simple philosophy on setting a goal for 30 days to change a habit you have in your life. I thought great...I want to utilize this philosophy with twitter. I have made it a constant effort to tweet each day at my school for 30 days. It had been a life changer in multiple ways. For one, I have shared publicly a lot of the great things going on at my schools. Second, I have become a daily researcher of knowledge bites. And third, it has grown my PLN to an exciting level. The second key experience in the past month was a blog post by @tomwhitby on PLNs ( http://bit.ly/phgdJ8 ). I have really become conscious of being media literate and modeling the knowledge I have. I have found myself in positive twitter discussions with multiple administrators over the past couple of weeks. We can not ignore social media, and I will argue that we have to experience and use social media to help move education forward. My friend Michael has been doing an unbelievable job helping students see the potential of twitter with real world projects at Kornerstone Charter School. I become motivated every day I read the updates from students about their true learning experiences.
This past summer I decided to start a program to get my educational administration license. My close friends Michael McCabe and Ryan McGinnis (@CoachMcGinnis) have joined me on an adventure to help build a program to embrace an open source program in education. We have been joined by Tim and Kim from Western Wisconsin in our journey, and we have all been growing as people by our close bond this summer. We are looking at taking our Chippewa Falls Learning Community to a nationwide sharing network. Our vision, which will be explained in greater depth at a later date, is to provide a space which will live on for other administrators, and potential administrators, to have a resource to expand on our ideas, and share new ideas which they may have. We believe it will take on a life of it's own. We believe, at this time, that this will be our early contributions to the educational administration field. We are looking to hide less, and open up more discussions and great ideas. Last week I was able to run this idea past Lisa Misco (@Maggiemay629). She was a previous graduate of the current program we are going through. She enjoyed the concept of the open network for all to add to. This is just another way to build a person's PLN. Lisa is an unbelievable administrator who is years ahead of the profession. Her discussions and ideas would definitely add to the discussions on twitter about #edchat. We (educators on twitter) need to seek out great people and educators to help add to the PLN pool. The bigger we can build the pool, the more ideas we can discuss, and more unique outcomes will come from it.
Overall, the PLN helps link my passions together and to open doors. As we all become busier than we were the year before, we need to have places to go to get quick (140 character) answers and research. Twitter allows educators to learn when they need to learn, and more importantly, when they have time to learn. Twitter will help education move forward at a faster pace by broadening people's spheres of influence. The goal of our Admin Program is to capitalize on this intellectual theory for the betterment of the whole.
Now I will end with the only way I can think of for this post.... Follow me on twitter!!!!!! @krauseunc
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