Why do you follow someone on twitter? I’ve thought about that a lot as I have made decisions about who I should follow and who I won’t follow. Usually, I am quite liberal in following people who follow me. If they have similar interests then I figure we might be able to help each other out. They may share things that interest me and viceversa. Also we might be able to give each other feedback on our own writings and thinking.

Yet when I have seen other posts in the past on this kind of topic, it is usually very focused on self interest. Advice on who to follow is mostly based on looking out for number one, figuring out what is in it for you, etc. I don’t think we can be completely alturistic, but at the same time is self-interest the one or most important factor. Yes, our time, like our money, is a limited resource. Yes, we want to get the best value we can (most bang for the buck or meat for the minute, as it were). But does that always come from what others can do for us? I think we can get a lot more out of our relationships and our learning networks if we focus on what we can give than what we can get… As we share our learning with others, help someone in need of some feedback, share our thoughts in answer to an inquiry, give of ourselves, we’ll ultimatley get more out of our learning networks. In other words, you get more from what you give than what you take.

If we don’t have a more other-centric view of learning in networks, I don’t think it will work the way we planned. Just as in any relationship, if all we do is take then soon there won’t be anybody there for us to take from.

If you stubmle upon this post and have read this far, thank you for your time. I apologize for a bit of a rant. But I’d love to hear your thoughts. Why do you follow who you do? How do you contribute to make your network followers and friends better for having followed you?

Happy Holidays (of which Christmas and Thanksgiving are my favorites)!

Of course I did basically did a Master’s degree in Spanish, so it wasn’t exactly a challenging quiz, but what do you think of the idea? Is it good for people to show off their learning? Is it genius because now these people (myself included) are now voluntarily putting ads for them on our blogs?

The dinner Has been fun so far. Suzy Cox let me use her iPhone to do
this. That was really cool of her. a lot of us are doing dumb things
to earn points in the competion. What fun!

Nancy White was the key note address and she presented on some deep issues related to learning as individual and in communities and groups. She discussed the implications of these different approaches or views of learning in an interesting way, I wish I could capture it better. If you want to see her address, check this out: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7565443

I attended Jeni Gubler's session (not just because it was right before mine. She spoke about students' perspectives on technology use and how practice using technology changes the focus from teachers to students. Her presentation can be viewed here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7566730

I should have gotten more out of it, but I was a little preoccupied (since I was next up to present). People loved her presentation, however. She took more many questions from the participants than I did.

After a fun lunch with friends and colleagues, I attended a session on Google Apps for education by James Covili. It was a good session, most of it I was already familiar with, though I didn't attend the second hour only because I wanted to attend the session on TwHistory, which I did. To view this session, go here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7569622

The session on TwHistory was conducted by Tom Caswell, Marion Jensen, and Rob Barton. They have passion for their work and it shows. We helped participate in a Twitter reenactment of the sinking of the Titanic. We did a little bit of research and then wrote s few tweets and used socialoomph (http://www.socialoomph.com/) to schedule tweets. I knew services like this existed, but it was fun to actually use it and participate. I missed the first session where they explained the background, but you can view their Prezi presentation here: http://prezi.com/vyozk6gzgnd1/twhistory-ttix-2010/. Also, they have  site http://twihistory.org/ and twitter account (http://twitter.com/twhistory). You can see the recording of their presentation here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7569687

There were a bunch of other sessions that I want to catch up on, you can check them out from here: http://www.ustream.tv/user/ttix/videos 

Great conference so far, and best of all it is Free!

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7567030

If you have a chance to watch, let me know what you liked and what could be improved.