Pearl(s) of wisdom

I hated writing as a child.  I was one of those children who would read everything they could, but I threw tantrums when it came to writing anything.  I remember full-on crying fits with my mother sitting there, waiting for me to get tired, and helping me through it.  To this day, I dislike to write.  The fear of writing and being judge for my grammar, sentence structure, etc (I was a science and math teacher people!) is overwhelming but I can't let it stop me.   So, why is this "hater of writing" doing a blog? I blame Kristen Swanson.

I have been reading her book, Professional Learning in the Digital Age, and it is inspiring. I have been feeling lost about my personal PD and how to get my secondary admin team on board to do anything. Kristen spends the first chapter talking about the cycle of professional learning (User Generated Learning) in today's digital world.  The cycle is (paraphrased by me) gathering information, reflecting, and applying.  I realized after reading Chapter 1, I am really good at gathering information.  I love twitter! I would say I am addicted at times.  I love reading blogs, books and articles (I am sure this is shocking from the girl who just said she loves to read).  But, I was skipping step two, reflection, and moving on to step 3, implementation. I am great at reflecting orally with friends, colleagues, etc.  However, after reading the first part of her book, I realized my reflection needed it to be more formal.   So here is my formal attempt on reflection.  Let's hope I can keep it up.

On page 4, Kristen references a website to help you organize all the resources you find on twitter (and yes, I am past page 4) called pearltrees (www.pearltrees.com) .  This is your #pearlofwidsom for the post.  You have to get a pearltrees.  To the right is a start of my pearltree.  I used to mail myself tweets that I found interesting.  Then my inbox was full of emails from myself of things.  I have a little OCD about my inbox, so then I created a folder for emailed tweets. This site is cleaning up my inbox and folders big time.  There is even a chrome extension to allow you to post to your pearltrees without leaving the blog/page you are on.  It makes my twitter so much more organized.  This OCD girl is happy!

My last taken away from chapter 1 of this book is a quote.  "Learning with technology is more important that learning about technology."  We have to remember that tech is there to help us, not be the reason we don't use it.