Sunday, January 6, 2013

My 2013 New Years E Resolutions

Generally speaking I don't 'do' New Years resolutions, however I have been intending to revitalise my online work this year, with that in mind I felt that it would be appropriate to publish what I was intending to do as motivation for myself.

#Comments4Kids.  This comes from Will Chamberlain who is the major contributor to this site, an amazing concept, a great idea and such a worthwhile concept.  I've decided that I need to promote the hash tag as much as possible within my PLN and at other opportunities.  I also want to pledge that I will comment at least once a day for a full calendar year, which of course will mean 365 comments minimum on students blogs.  That's quite a few, but well within the range of what I have been doing in a general sense.  I've never actually tracked how many comments that I would leave in a year but I suspect it would be near a thousand.

I also want to involve myself significantly when theres the #comment4kids week, again its a stellar idea from Will, something that's such a great networking and collaboration idea.  When I think back to my online work the 'push' that I needed came from one teacher who left a positive comment to the students that were working with in my classroom.

#Twitter.  My PLN on Twitter (NZWaikato) has reached a point that its generating new connections all the time, I've got just over 1,500 followers.  I've been managing it pretty closely, I've included in my bio 'If you're not an education please don't follow me' this tends to keep away most of the commerical followers that my account attracts, it isn't perfect, but I do recognise the need to be more pro-active with my account.

#2012/2013.  In New Zealand the school year runs from the start of February to mid December.  That means a year of students has just finished and in four weeks time another will start.  I'm very lucky that the incoming group of students (23 out of class of 30) are students who have already been in my classroom.  I need to continue to develop the work with these students and utilize what they've done online to raise their work.

#Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration. I've had some great positive online experiences in the past five years, the length of time that I've been active.   The highlights have always started and finished with great collaboration, what ever the platform, what ever the site collaboration I believe is the key, if you haven't tried it, that's one challenge that I would encourage you to work on.  Share.

#ContinuetobeInspired.   If you haven't visited some great sites to get inspired then you should.  These four pages always inspire me: Linda Yollis - best class page in the world, two years in a row.  Will Chamberlain, Mr C's Class page, my biggest online inspiration.  Mr Millers Class - a great inspiring site with wonderful ideas, content and digital integration of the site.  Check them out they are all marvelous.