Soundtrack for this post: Hello Beautiful Life – Skydiggers

There are many educators (and others) who are skeptical about the value of Twitter. This morning, several things occurred that would not have, had I not been on Twitter as I did other work on the computer.

1. I made a plan to visit Edna Sackson (@whatedsaid) at her school when I am in Melbourne in April.

This came about because I made a comment to a couple of teachers who had already commented her blog post 10 things you can’t just do on Monday in period 6… I arrived at the post because someone tweeted the link with a comment but unfortunately I don’t remember who that was.

As you can see we are both excited!

2.  I exchanged tweets with my brother, Evan, a high school history teacher. In the process, I became aware that tech integration (which many of us are advocating for in elementary schools vs standalone ICT classes that teach skills isolation) isn’t the best model for secondary unless the students are digitally literate.

The conversation started over my tweeting a quote from the same blog post as above:

Evan replied and here’s how it played out:

And along the way Edna chimed in and included a link to a blog post by Iain Guest (@IaninSheffield) about discrete vs embedded ICT lessons.

Guess what?

And so does he!

3. I helped an HS special education teacher in Manila make professional connections.

Evan had mentioned that his colleague was having a hard time finding other special education teachers to connect with and he was encouraging him to try Twitter. He convinced Kevin to sign up (@KGStroudlusk) and I started sending him suggestions of people to follow. Within a few days, Kevin sent out this tweet:

One of my suggestions was Shawn Ram (@sram_socrates), a spec-ed teacher in Alberta. We exchanged a few tweets and I told him about Evan’s quest to help Kevin.

And he has been posting links to pass on and using his connections to send more suggestions to Kevin.

(The link goes to this site)

Tomorrow Evan is going to help Kevin set up a Twitter client so he can more easily follow some of Shawn’s suggestions.

4. I helped my brother build his argument to take to his admin about why Facebook should not be blocked at his school.

Evan wrote this blog post and tweeted about it:

I checked it out and sent this message out:

With minutes, one of my tweeps had sent it out as well:

And within a few hours, Evan had several comments on his post.

5. I got invited to be our school rep for a student film fest being put together by international schools here in Singapore.

If I hadn’t had a connection with Tyler (one that started and continues on Twitter though we’ve now met face-to-face a few times), he wouldn’t have thought of me.

6. I followed the tweets of some teachers who were in Hong Kong at an ICT in the PYP workshop.

Adding #ICTinPYP to their tweets, allowed me to follow along and see what different people were saying – not as good as being at the workshop in person but I did get some good ideas, I was able to share some of mine and this tweet about the wiki they worked on made me very happy!

So after a few hours of all of this, I tweeted:

To which my brother replied:

I tried to start the school year. I went to work for the full week before the students came back; I went to staff meetings, team meetings and collaborative planning meetings; I created schedules for the computer labs; had all the teachers sign up for their library times; I planned lessons for the first week – all the stuff you do to try to get ready for the students. And all went smoothly on the first day but the second day I woke up and realized that what I thought was a runny nose due to allergies had turned into something more. I went to school anyway (that’s what teachers do) but left right after school to do some grocery shopping for a book club meeting at my house the following evening before going home and crawling into bed. That was Tuesday. I didn’t crawl out again until Sunday (needless to say I canceled the book club meeting). That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I did take a cab to and from the doctor’s on Thursday morning. She diagnosed me with influenza and the beginnings of an ear infection, gave me meds and told me to stay home until Tuesday. I had a fever until Sunday morning. (I don’t know the last time if ever that I had a fever for five days.) Monday I managed to wash my hair and I figured I must be ready for school the next day, so I set my alarm and headed back to school on Tuesday. I was blowing my nose a lot and still coughing but I tried to convince everyone (and myself) that I was much better than I had been. I taught in the morning and tried to catch up on urgent stuff.  I attempted to stay long enough for a class after lunch but by 11:30 am I had made another doctor’s appointment and was on my home. This time the diagnosis was a sinus infection and I added more meds to those I was already taking. It is now Saturday. I have two more days of antibiotics and I figure I should be able to go back to school on Monday. But that’s not what this blog post is about; that’s just the background.

This blog post is about what I have learned this week while I lay around resting and recuperating (in no particular order):

• The cloud rocks. It is so much better to create files as Google docs or upload them to Google docs or use Dropbox or something other application that keeps them in the cloud rather than saving them on a server that you can only access at work. I was able to tweak timetables and keep track of my own and I was able to help with lab bookings and the like.

• Having a PLN and friends on social networks keeps you from being completely isolated while stuck at home. I was able to follow more of the great stuff being shared on Twitter and to pass on valuable links to colleagues. I participated in a meeting to choose books for the Red Dot Award via Skype. Being at home during the day meant that I had more overlapping hours to catch up with friends on the other side of the world via Skype and various chat applications (and even the – gasp – telephone once or twice).

• I ♥ my iPhone. Yes it is only a 3G model but it was perfect for quick checks of email, Facebook, Twitter and reading articles and blog posts while lying in bed too weak to sit up and hold my laptop and unable to focus long enough to read a book.

• A warm laptop feels great on your chest when you are experiencing the chills part of fever and chills.

• Lisa Patton is a fabulous MS/HS teacher-librarian (and a good friend). She sent home a stack of great YA novels to keep me busy. You can see them on my Goodreads.

• No matter how much time I have or how bored I may get, blogging and catching up on Google Reader come at the end of the list of ways I will find to amuse myself.

• If you are a teacher-librarian and you have to get sick, do it before you have put collaborative lessons plans in place.

Here’s to being well!