MACUL 08 Conference

Well, here I am- I am pumped up for a great two days here at macul08. In the first 1/2 hour I have already learned a ton and have added several new features to my blog! I LOVE having my laptop and wireless access and have been cross-referencing sites the presenters reference. I've checked out Gcast, joined the MACUL space through my Ning account, and even checked in with work and answered some email before the presentation started!

I'm off to a wonderful day-

Heading to MACUL and learning Twitter

I've been playing all last evening and early this morning on Twitter...I'd like to have the ability to Twitter straight from my blog. I have not been able to figure that out yet. I read about Traackr but have not explored that application. Just downloaded Twitbin so I could tweet that I am working on this post. I'll keep playing; right now I'm trying to decide if my tweets are narcissistic but if I get people to respond with proactive and thought-provoking ideas I am going to love the account.

I have to thank Mark Ahlness for getting me motivated to explore twitter...he is now following me so maybe he will read this and know that he has made a positive impact on an educator in Michigan's learning process. Pretty awesome to consider the power of making connections and being connected. To be fair, I should also thank my friend Sarah for introducing me to Mark's blog in the first place.

I am excited to be heading out early Thursday morning to the MACUL conference in Grand Rapids. I finally updated my phone because the old one died (I have a camera for the first time! So lame, I know, but who has time to shop for phones?!?!?! Especially when mine worked.) so I plan to be armed with my laptop and my phone and I'll be tweeting and snapping photos and updating from my blog and learning. It will be great. I have a Flickr account, but still need to figure out how to do a few things on that as well. That will be next!

Meeting

The days just seem to fly by and my To Do list grows longer and longer. However, one thing that I have been spending time thinking about during my daily commute is a media meeting we had last week. I am continually struck by how nice it was to have the time to sit down with my peers last week and talk. Productive talk. Through our productive talk we laughed together and shared ideas and discussed hot topics. When I left our meeting I was so jazzed!

I think it is the only time in my short media career that a group of us sat together to talk in that fashion. Usually at our meetings we sit and gnaw over district policy and procedure or listen to presentations. We did a little of that too, but time was built into the meeting for our discussion. It was so refreshing! I want more time like that. I need more time like that. Because the days just fly by and my To Do list is growing longer. I need to connect with the other media specialists in my district. It makes so much sense for us to connect. Collaboratively we have the potential to truly rock! Isolated we chase our tails...or at least I do.

Work in Progress

Well, I am writing. I see I average about once a year. Something I would like to work on improving...I guess part of it is; why would anyone be interested in anything I had to say anyway?

This will be short. I am trying something new and want to see how it looks on the page.

I did make that wiki for our district media specialists. I haven't unveiled it to the group so no one knows that it exists. I've joined Classroom 2.0. I haven't done much with that yet either. I do faithfully read blogs in my bloglines account.

I read something this week that puts my mind to ease about all these different ideas and my lack of mastering them all. It puts my head in a good place to remember this:

I am a work in progress and that is ok.

How awful would it be if I were completed?!?!?!