I was very disappointed when I learned earlier this week that I have pneumonia.  I was bummed because I feel bad, but even more bummed because my physician told me I could not attend the MACUL Conference!  I look forward to the conference every year.  This year, I had more responsibilites than ever before… facilitating sessions, writing/posting to the MACUL blog, helping run the SIG-EE annual meeting, manning the MACUL booth, and supporting all the presenters from my district.

So I decided to do what I can virtually. I started with Twitter.  The conference has Twitter buzzing for sure!  I started following everyone who was following MACUL.  People at the conference share tips, links, and ideas.  As people share links, I tag them in my delicious account as macul09.  If you would like to see all the links I tagged, you can see them here.

I attended Thursday’s Alan November keynote through the eyes of Ben Rimes and Kevin Clark as they used Cover it Live.  It was almost as if I was there.  When they wrote about students being creators of content, with Audacity being one of the tools mentioned, I shared some Audacity video tutorials.  Shortly afterwords, I received a nice note by email from Kent Manning, a technology coordinator from Belleville, Ontatio, Canada.  He also was not able to be at the conference and was “attending” the keynote virtually.  We have similar jobs.  He wondered if my tutorials were on iTunes (they weren’t) and told me an easy way to get them there.  We are now Twitter friends and I’ve invited him to try out Plurk.  Plurk is a Twitter-like network that allows more conversations.  Try it out if you have not yet. Steve Dembo likes it; if Steve likes it, you probably will, too.  Anyhow, this is an example of how a PLN can help you learn and grow professionally.

Later, a friend (Krista Hanna), saw that I was online and had Skype open.  She called me and I was able to listen in on two of the sessions she attended.  Awesome.  Krista and I were to co-present this morning.  Since Skype worked so well, we planned that if I was feeling up to it, that she would Skype me in for the presentation.  I don’t look too great, so I did not turn on my webcam; I didn’t want to horrify the participants and have them run out of the room!  However, I was able to pipe in with comments during the presentation. VERY COOL.

I’m also taking the opportunity to reflect on the conference, something that is difficult to do when you are rushing from place to place and networking with others.  I have some ideas for the conference planners on ways to make MACUL 2010 even better!

You wanted Back Channels, and MACUL has delivered!

Take a moment to check out the video below to see just how the official MACUL Space or Twitter Back Channels can help you connect in real time with other conference attendees. Share information about a session (while sitting in on the session), help cheer someone up that’s halfway through a mind-numbing lecture on the significance of packet shaping, or just see what a friend is up to on the other end of the conference center.

You can also view a nice large full size version of the MACUL Back Channel video by clicking on the link here.

Feel free to use the MACUL Space chat, or MACUL Twitter Feeds to keep yourself connected and share thoughts while at the conference, just remember your best Internet etiquette

I must have come across RSS at a MACUL Conference…how else would I have stumbled across it?  It seems like I’ve been reading feeds for years, but surely it hasn’t been that long.  Google Reader was announced in the fall of 2005, but I was still with Bloglines before they were bought by Ask Jeeves in February 2005 (Remember Jeeves?) So that’s at least 4 years…well, I guess around 40 in Internet-years, so it’s been a while.

If you don’t know what RSS is, and even if you do, RSS in Plain English is an awesome video explaining everything.  (Here’s another one…Google Reader in Plain English.)

Now…40 years later…I can’t imagine not using RSS every day to follow news and events in ed tech and beyond. A person in my position is kinda expected to know what’s new and exciting…and Googling new and exciting on a daily basis does not return many usable results.  I have to get more specific info from sources I know will be relevant.  So, I subscribe to feeds about gadgets, web tools, and tech news as well as LOLcats, Star Wars, and Venn diagrams.

I also use RSS feeds to keep track of who is updating my wiki, or what’s happening in some of the classrooms around the county. or the latest activity on one of the world’s greatest social networks dedicated to educational technology.

All told, as of right now, I have 67 subscriptions in my Google Reader.  (No, I don’t read them all everyday…and really, that’s not that many…)  Like Lee Lefever suggested in the video, I could go out to 67 sites on a regular basis to find out what’s new (Boo!).  However, thanks to RSS I have all that info spilling in to my office everyday!

New to Twitter, and not sure where all your MACUL friends are hanging out? Perhaps you’ve been twittering for awhile, and you just can’t seem to get any of the other educators in the building to hop on board. Never fear, your closest MACUL buddies are here! After reading Patti’s post about how she started using Twitter, and subsequently how important it’s become to her personal development, I thought I’d point out the giant Twitter discussion thread over at MACUL Space.

You’re probably not going to find every single person you’re looking for, but with over 63 replies, the MACUL Twitterers discussion thread is a good place to find some familiar faces using the popular micro-blogging service. You can find the twitter names of other MACUL members, share your own twitter name, or just follow them to get your daily dose of the MACUL conference on your desktop. Happy tweeting!

I joined Twitter after last year’s MACUL Conference. Steve Dembo introduced it as part of his “10 Best Web 2.0 Tools” session. (Make sure you attend all Steve Dembo sessions!) Twitter did not take long to figure out and soon I was reading the conversations of some amazing tech educators (140 characters at a time of course.) I found myself rushing home to get on Twitter and reading through all the tweets I’d missed while at school. (I occasionally have time to tweet from school, but not often!) I’d spend hours exploring the links shared and reading the blogs of those I was following. I was learning more than I could have ever imagined and it was all stuff I could bring right back into the classroom. If I asked a question, many replied with great suggestions, links, ideas. When some of the “Big Deal” Tech people that I was following responded to me – it felt like I just got invited to sit at the cool kids table!

I also started my own blog because of the example and encouragement of those on Twitter. It didn’t matter if anyone read it, I was putting my thoughts and ideas out there and it was a great experience just to do it. I was especially proud of a video I made with my 2nd graders. I posted it on my Classroom Blog and decided to put the link out on Twitter. I didn’t realize one of the “Big Deal” people I was following noticed it, and Re-tweeted it to her following (which was much bigger than mine.) I ended up with 14 comments on my blog! What an incredible moment to receive so much positive feedback and encouragement from people who have never met me. (I was choked up – it was a Wow! moment.) I also realized -If I am this affected by praise, what is it like for my students? (Another Wow!)

I have made many friends on Twitter, a few I have met in person, some I someday hope to meet and others are half a world away in Australia and New Zealand. We share ideas, ask questions, encourage each other, laugh with each other, cheer for each other, learn from each other and share some of the same taste in TV (I follow many who are also fans of LOST, 24 and Heroes. We do not Tweet during these programs, nor do we give plot information away as some are in another time zone.)

I have learned so much from Twitter and the best part is tomorrow there will be even more to learn. May the Tweets be with you.

Since there’s been so much discussion lately about Twitter on MACULSpace, I thought it was a good time to announce that the MACUL Conference Blog now has a live Twitter search feed, giving you a peak into what’s being said about the MACUL Conference on the popular micro-blogging site, Twitter. Check out the MACUL Conference Blog Twitter Page to learn what’s being said about the MACUL Conference.

Don’t have an account on Twitter? No problem, the twitter feed doesn’t require any login; simple visit the Tweets @ MACUL page, and you can read what other people are talking about during the conference. Already using Twitter? Just mention the word “macul” while twittering and you’re tweet will be displayed on the Conference Blog Twitter page.