Making Connections and Conversations
Posted by simonsays on November 20, 2007
When I started to get interested in integrating technology into my teaching and learning I kept hearing about how the conversations and making connections were a big part of it. My friend Chris encouraged me to start blogging and to be honest I couldn’t understand why I would do it. I thought that by blogging I would be like one of those people who like I the sound of their own voice so to speak. You know the type. Well I began
anyways just to see where it would take me. Well it took an interesting turn this past weekend. I had the most unusual response to a blog post ever. I got a phone call. I was really shocked when I listened to the message. The voice at the other end had read something I posted and wanted to post it on his site and asked me to write for him in the future. We share a common interest and goal. And there it is: making connections and conversations.
Image from Tom Purves
November 21st, 2007 at 12:02 am
Yeah It’s pretty weird… I’m looking at all these doors opening for me at the moment and realising that nearly ALL of them have come from blogging or the associated connections that have emerged from blogging. To look at this from the front end, before you begin blogging, you would have to conclude that there is no possible way that reading and writing your thought to an online environment could have any possible effect on your future… but once you start seeing it from the back end, with hindsight, the doors it opens are pretty amazing.
The thing is, if someone outside of this process is skeptical of this idea of creating non-trivial connections (and they would be right to) it makes perfect sense to dismiss blogging as a self indulgent activity… but the reality of having done it is markedly different. It really DOES open a world of opporunities, or at least that has been my experience (and now yours too Simon)
July 28th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
It is great making connections … I have just found your blog via Twitter, and am about to visit your Catholic Teachers Online wiki. I have learnt so much through blogging, especially from following links from one blogger to another. And it is always nice to get a comment on my own blog, or, like you, a personal approach from someone regarding what I have written. I am about to follow you on Twitter, and look forward to reading more of your musings in the future.
It seems to have been a while since you last posted / twittered … I hope you will be back soon!