I am so proud that each one of these people is part of my PLN! Excellent job to Eric, Steven, Shelly, and Tom.

Twitter & Education – #140conf LA from RealPlayer SP on Vimeo.

Fundraising for the ISTE 10 Newbie Project is off to a great start, but we still have a very long way to go to reach the goal of $1600. As of noon today we have raised $560. In the coming weeks I am going to post a series of challenges to my personal learning network (PLN) to help us meet the goal. (Thank you @ellsbeth for this great idea!) Starting  right now and ending at midnight EST this Friday, I am challenging educators in New York to donate to the project. Jason Schrage is the Newbie for ISTE 10 and he is a  middle school social studies teacher from Elmira, New York. He is attending the Western Southern Tier Council for the Social Studies conference on Friday.  If you are attending this conference I  hope that you will consider donating to this project. While you may not be part of his online personal learning network, Jason certainly plays a role in your face to face learning network.

If you are an educator from New York and you were planning on donating to the Newbie Project then this would be a great time to do it. I would like to raise an additional $240 by midnight on November 6 which would get us to the half way mark.

Click the PayPal button to make a donation to the Newbie Project:

If you are an educator from New York and you were planning on donating to the Newbie Project then this would be a great time to do it. I would like to raise $240 by midnight on November 6 which would get us to the half way mark.

I have tried to write this post no fewer than three dozen times and each time I struggle with where to begin. Sometimes it is hard for me to figure out exactly where I fit in with my PLN. There are days when my role is crystal clear and I feel so connected to everyone, but then there are days where I feel lost and disconnected from what is going on. Earlier this evening I asked my PLN to tell me one word that they would use to describe me. (Thanks to everyone who contributed. I hope I can keep being all of these things!) Their responses are the Wordle about this post. One day last spring when I was feeling particularly passionate, innovative, resourceful, and fearless, I devised a plan to test our strength.

Most of you who are reading this already know about the Newbie Project. I know you are sick and tired of hearing me talk about it, but there are some things that I feel I need to say. I think that somewhere along the way the meaning of the project was lost. The purpose was to come together as a PLN to raise awareness about the benefits of social networking. It just so happens that Richard Byrne was the beneficiary of your generosity last year and Jason Schrage will benefit this year.

Last week I started asking for contributions to the project. There are not too many things that make me more uncomfortable than asking people to part with their money. In fact, I HATE asking people for donations, but it is just part of what I have to do as the project coordinator. While it is great that so many of you are helping raise awareness the cold hard truth is that it just isn’t enough. In order for this project to be successful I need your help. I don’t want any one person to contribute more than $5 unless they really want to do so. I want hundreds of people to contribute just a few dollars. That’s all it will take. I know that together we can make it happen, but I also know that so many people don’t even think about donating because they figure someone else will do it. The problem is that when nearly everyone thinks that way it will spell failure for the project. (Similar to the bystander problem that Malcom Gladwell references in The Tipping Point). My job is to convince you to care about “your neighbor.”

There was such a positive response to this project last year. I was encouraged by dozens of people in my PLN to make the Newbie Project into an annual event. Where did all of you go? I need you right now and I am asking (OK–begging!) you to support this project. I know that ISTE is still 240 days away, but I need to wrap up the fund-raising part of the project for my own sanity. I have taken some measures to cut back on some costs, but we are still $1462 short of the $1600 goal. (A plane ticket from Upstate New York to Denver is not cheap!)

The original intent of the project was to serve as a testament to the power of our PLN. I have no doubt that if we each take on a tiny portion of the cost of the Newbie project we will meet the goal in no time. It will also mean so much more if there are hundreds of people who participate. So what do you say? Is it possible for us to do this again this year or have we run out of steam? We are a focused, trailblazing, and caring group of people. I refuse to believe there is even a chance that we will fail. If we work together failure is not even a possibility.

Newbie Project Spreadsheet

Twitter Mentor Spreadsheet

The other morning my Blackberry started going nuts. I figured it was a bunch of spammers until I looked and saw that nearly all of them were from Kansas. A few hours later…..another group of 30 or so new followers.  I contacted one of them and she told me that there were about 150 students taking the class. I was thrilled at the idea of 150 preservice teachers learning from my PLN, but I also know the challenges that all new Twitter users face. In order to stick with it you must see a purpose. Sometimes the purpose becomes evident immediately while other times it might take weeks or months for it to become apparent. Most educators who stop using Twitter because they never see the true value in it. They never have that a-ha moment that makes it meaningful and relevant to them.

As the last group of K State students was signing up for their accounts this afternoon my phone was going berserk again. I could not help but wonder how many of the students would stick it out. How many of them will actually use Twitter? How many will experience that moment where they could never think of giving up Twitter because it has become part of what they do? I began to wonder if there was anything I could do to help them make that connection. All of a sudden it hit me. Why not try to connect members of my PLN with the students? We could act as mentors  and show them what we have learned by being part of a network. Within a couple of minutes I had created a spreadsheet and sent out the link to my PLN. Within 90 minutes we had 45 mentors signed up.

I cannot wait to see if the students come back to sign up to work with us.  I also hope others will take this example and run with it. Our PLN has so much to offer, but for the most part we are an untapped resource.  If you are a mentor I recommend sharing your email address so you can have conversations that are a little longer than 140 characters!

Maybe K State will send some of these preservice teachers to ISTE 10 in Denver?????

Jason and his son

About six months ago an idea started coming together inside of my head.  I wanted to “test” the power of my personal learning network. By April my PLN was firmly established and the value and power of Twitter was becoming more evident each day.  No matter how hard I tried to educate people about the benefits of Twitter the vast majority of people still turned their nose up at it. I set out on a mission to prove that Twitter was the most powerful tool that I had at my disposal.  I decided to see if my PLN could raise enough money to send a fellow teacher to NECC 2009 in Washington DC.  After looking over the people in my PLN I decided to ask Richard Byrne to be the guinea pig for the experiment. Since he didn’t have anything to lose, he happily  agreed.  Richard was already very popular on Twitter and also well known for his blog, FreeTech4Teachers. Since he had such a large support base, it only took two weeks to reach the $1500 goal.  I assumed the 2009 Newbie project would be the only one, but in the weeks leading up to the conference there was a lot of press surrounding the project. I felt like there was enough momentum and interest to do it again.

During NECC,  I introduced Jason Schrage as the Newbie for 2010.  I felt he deserved the chance to attend ISTE  which will be in Denver next summer. Is he more deserving than any of the other educators in my PLN? Of course not, but  I could only pick one person. I chose Jason because he stood out to me for a variety of reasons. First, he was not afraid to ask for help. My first encounter with Jason involved him asking for my help with a blog post.  It was evident that he was willing to investing his own time in learning as much as he could from his PLN. After a few months of working with him on a variety of projects I realized that he was an amazing teacher who had some fantastic ideas.  I already know our PLN can pull together to send a “rock star” to ISTE, but can we send someone who is not a well known edublogger?

This post is meant to rally the troops. In order to make the 2010 Newbie Project successful we  need your help. Please do not assume that a donation of just a few dollars will not make a difference. The idea behind this project is for hundreds of people in our PLN to make a very small donation. If everyone who has told me what a great idea this project is would donate just $5 we would easily meet the goal of $1600.  We are not only counting on your monetary donation, but we need you to help get the word out about this project.

Donations can be made on either my blog or on Jason’s blog using the PayPal button. Please add your name and contact information to the spreadsheet as well. There is NOT a column where you are able to list the amount you donated. After discussing this with Jason we both felt there was no need to put this on the spreadsheet.

Whether you are going to ISTE in Denver or not I hope you will consider supporting this project. Even if you are not an educator I hope you will consider making a contribution.  Jason teaches over 100 students face-to-face each year, but he indirectly affects hundreds (maybe thousands more) more by sharing his knowledge on Twitter and his blog. Please tell him thank you by helping send him to Denver this summer.