Summer Update

August 18, 2008

It is summer here in Texas and we have been busy. First there was June Jazz. Then NECC in San Antonio. Then VACATION (woo hoo!). Then July Jazz. Now installing equipment for the RUS grant.

Did I mention it is HOT this summer in Texas? Next week, we will be attending Elevate 2008 in Banff. The program looks amazing and the high each day is around 80 degrees F.

I have not been blogging much this summer because I was burned out from last year. We ended up with over 1,000 conferences serving about 20,000 students in virtual field trips, EDLINK12 sponsored projects, and other curriculum videoconferences shared with us by others.

So from my over-tired brain, I turned away from blogging which requires a medium to high amount of energy to Twitter which only allows 140 characters at a time. For three months, my mantra was “I don’t get it. I don’t really like it.”

I never, ever, ever, ever thought I would be typing these words, “I like Twitter!” Yep, I said it and I think that it will be helpful for us next year. By us, I mean those of us who are sharing projects and working at the speed of insanity. BTW, I loved Twitter at Necc (except for the outages). @kusdiva was great to meet and exchange ideas with.

@kennethconnjr, just rolled his eyes and said, “I don’t get it. I hate having to GO to the site and check.” Well, for all of you Firefox 3.0 people, there is TwitterFox and it, uh, ROCKS! It just sits in the bottom corner of your browser and you can watch the tweets scroll in. You can tweet a link, replies, and messages from whatever page you are on. Problem solved! For those of you reading that are still skeptical of the value of Twitter for work purposes, here is some Olympic commentary for you.

Now, back to working on the calendar.

Posted in Staff Development, Supportive Technologies