My friends and fam­ily would cer­tainly tell you that I am a very social per­son.  As a mat­ter of fact, they claim I can’t go any­where with­out bump­ing into some­one who I know some­how.  With that in mind, I have to admit that dur­ing my career in schools I was some­what iso­lated.  Yes, I did attend the occa­sional con­fer­ence, and yes I would talk to other teach­ers dur­ing lunch and before and after the school day.  We would also have the oppor­tu­nity to col­lab­o­rate when we had pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment days.

The prob­lem is that even with those con­nec­tions, it was a rare event to get out of the build­ing and con­nect with other edu­ca­tors. This really lim­its the ways that schools can change and it rein­forces the sta­tus quo.  Can we really expect peo­ple to change when they spend the major­ity of their time in the same sys­tem with peo­ple who have sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences and mind­sets?  Where do we expect new ideas, resources, and oppor­tu­ni­ties to come from?

This past year I have been able to con­nect with edu­ca­tors from around the state, nation, and world with  extremely diver­si­fied back­grounds, inter­ests, beliefs, and strengths.  Those indi­vid­u­als have been an extremely pow­er­ful resource for me.  You could argue that I have been able to do that now because my job has changed and I travel much more fre­quently.  You would be partly cor­rect, but more than that I have been able to con­nect because of tech­nol­ogy.   I’ve listed some of those tech­nolo­gies below that have pro­foundly impacted my pro­fes­sional growth. Please note that this list is not one of those top ten cool tech­nol­ogy tools lists.  I do like those lists, but my pur­pose is to sim­ply reflect on tech­nolo­gies that have helped me stay connected.

1. Twitter-I was a big skep­tic at first, but now I am a believer!  I get tons of resources from Twit­ter because I fol­low peo­ple who put out great stuff!  Links to web sites, blogs, arti­cles, and pro­vok­ing thoughts are the major ben­e­fits for me.  I also have enough “fol­low­ers” that I can post a ques­tion and gen­er­ally receive a quick response from some­one with a wealth of knowl­edge.  My time isn’t wasted fol­low­ing some­one like Brit­tany Spears who will share what they had for dinner.
2. RSS-My Google Reader is also invalu­able to me.  Rather than search­ing to see when blogs or web­sites are updated, every­thing comes to me.  I use this fre­quently when I am writ­ing my blog!  Although I keep sub­scrib­ing to more and more sites, my reader makes it fairly man­age­able to read all of those sites.
3. Blogs-When I made the move to Iowa State, I was given the task of blog­ging about one-to-one schools.  By blog­ging on a reg­u­lar basis, I have to con­tin­u­ally read and search for resources on the topic.  This  has been an extremely pow­er­ful way for me to increase my knowl­edge about the topic.
4. Google Docs-Much of the work I do is col­lab­o­ra­tive.  Google docs allow me to work with oth­ers  on the same doc­u­ments  with­out play­ing email tag with one another.  It also ensures that I have the doc­u­ments I need even if I don’t have my computer.
5. Pirate pad-OK, maybe this isn’t at the top of the list, but it is still valu­able.  Being able to take notes simul­ta­ne­ously with a group of peo­ple  enhances the qual­ity of my notes and it keeps me much more engaged with a work­shop or presentation.

These five tools have been a great way for me to stay con­nected.  I would strongly rec­om­mend every edu­ca­tor use these tools as resources to con­tinue to grow pro­fes­sion­ally.  They cer­tainly are not dif­fi­cult to learn!