I am a social studies teacher in the middle of my fourth year of teaching. If you are looking to read a blog that has “authority” on Technorati then please move on. According to Feedburner I have five subscribers. Do I find this discouraging? Not really. I consider my blog to be my little slice of the Web. It gives me a place to write, reflect, or vent. I am thrilled each time anyone responds to my posts because it gives me a chance to discuss what is on my mind.

About a month ago someone I follow on Twitter inquired as to what percent of our PD is formal (officially provided by school) and what percent is informal (from our PLN’s). I said that about 95% of my PD is informal. The honest answer is that about 100% of the new things I learn come from my PLN. I don’t know if those numbers are true for everyone who is part of a learning network, but I have a hunch that it is.

Why is this? Why do we turn to blogs, Nings, and Twitter to learn? If you have ever sat through an inservice that had absolutely no meaning to you then you already know the answer to that question. When we are part of a network we get to pick who we learn from and we get to pick the topics that we want to learn more about. It is like a cafeteria! I follow about 130 people on Twitter.  I have a nice blend of “top dogs” in education, educational technologists, Moodlers, and regular teachers like myself. I have Twitterfox set to update every five minutes. I see literally hundreds of tweets a day. About 75% are educational in nature while the rest are personal. Are the personal ones still valuable? Of course they are. It reminds me that the people I am following have families and lives outside of education and the Twitterverse. I get a great deal of satisfaction from being part of an online network. Even though I may never meet the vast majority of my PLN in person, I still feel a connection to them because we have things in common. I don’t always have things in common with the people that I work with each day.

If it is possible to gain good and useful information in an informal way then why do schools try so hard to discourage teachers from participation in a PLN? Some schools go so far as to tell teachers that they cannot even use Facebook on their own time. I guess I can count myself amongst the lucky. While my principal is not a blogger and not incredibly active online, he is very aware of the benefits of PLN’s.  We are encouraged to be active in our PLN during the school day. (Keep in mind that I only spend half of the day with “live” students. I teach online the other half of the day.)  ALL teachers have planning time and where do you suppose most of them end up? Yes…….in the teachers lounge! Imagine a school where teachers have the option of using that block of time to reach out to other teachers in their PLN. Maybe that teacher updates their Facebook or Ning pages. Maybe they write a blog post. Maybe they catch up on reading their favorite blogs. Maybe they get on Skype and set up a interactive video conference with a classroom on the other side of the world.

By blocking access to social networking sites schools are depriving teachers of legitimate opportunities to grow and become better educators. Administrators are concerned that teachers might spend class time on these sites. If there is a clear policy in place that stipulates when teachers can be on these sites then this should NOT be an issue.

There are amazing educators from around the world who have so much to offer, but their voices will never be heard because the sites where they are active are blocked. This needs to change…………..but how?

Wikipedia defines communication as “a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding.” John Mayer tells us to “say what we need to say,” but Twitter limits tweets to 140 characters. I belong to both the NECC2008 Ning and Classroom 2.0 and I post to forums in both Nings on a regular basis. I also post comments on blogs once in a while. I communicate a lot, but lately I question how effective my written communication skills really are.

I will start by discussing Twitter. It did not take me long to get hooked on Twitter. At first, I saw absolutely no value in it, but after I started following a few people (and gained a few followers) I started to see what all the fuss was about. But about a week ago my Twitter universe almost collapsed. (OK–maybe that is a little dramatic, but there was a problem.) I sent out a tweet that nearly cost me a new friendship. I meant nothing by what I said, but the damage was done. The strict 140 character limit did not allow me to elaborate on what I was trying to say and as a result the comment that I thought was witty was taken at face value by the intended recipient of the tweet. On the surface Twitter might seem like it makes us more efficient, but does it really? I am not sure if I want to run the risk of people assuming things about my personality that are just not true.

Skype is another application that has the potential to allow us to communicate with people from all over the world. Skype is intended to be used as a way to connect people using the power of the human voice, but sometimes we get caught up in using its instant messaging feature. We like the convenience of being able to do other things while we IM. If we were actually talking to the other person we would have to focus on that conversation. I find it sad that we are too busy to take a few minutes and actually speak with another person.

When we resort to using written forms of communication we run the risk of losing our personality, especially when we are forced to keep the posts short. There are times that I get in a hurry to post a tweet or comment on a blog and I am either running short on time of characters so I just say what I have to say instead of taking the time to say what I want to say.

Having excellent written communication skills is more important today than ever before. If someone is not in the room with us we tend to prefer to communicate through email, text, and IM because it is convenient. But what is the cost? Are we willing to work on these skills if they are not up to par so that we do not offend people by our online demeanor?

I have learned over the past few weeks that I need to improve my written communication skills. I need to get much better at putting my thoughts into words without sacrificing my identity. I tend to be sarcastic which does not translate well into online conversations. Especially when those conversations are limited to 140 characters.

Since returning from NECC I have become addicted to reading blogs. I came across a post that Darren Draper wrote about a year ago called Why Every Teacher Should Blog. I could not have come across this post at a better time! I came back from NECC feeling like I could change the world. What I experienced at the conference took me by complete surprise. I went to the conference alone, but came back feeling like I was connected to people from around the world. I feel pretty isolated from the rest of the world in western Nebraska, but blogging has changed all of that. I have found that blogging allows me to communicate my thoughts and feelings to the rest of the world. I also believe blogging would open up channels of communication inside of my school that seem to be turned off at the moment. Blogs give colleagues a chance to catch up with each other when they cannot do it in person. Maintaining a blog does take a little bit of work, but isn’t it worth it? It you have ever worked in a school where communication was a problem then you already know the answer to that question.

There is a group in the Ning dedicated to keeping conversations going post-conference. I posted a questions that pertains to blogging earlier today.