Last night I wasn’t going to tune in to the NECC buzz. I was tired and knew I was taking to my kids out in the morning to meet up with friends. But a tweet from Will Richardson alerted me to a ustream of Konrad Glogawski’s session about blogging communities and I couldn’t resist tuning in.
While it was exciting being able to see and hear Konrad’s presentation – I still marvel at just what is possible these days! – what was most exciting was the vigorous and thought provoking discussion in the ustream chat. Follow this link to check it out. It was wonderful being able to share ideas with educators from all over the globe. Teacherman 79 has written a post about the experience. Thanks very much Will for enabling this opportunity for those of us not in attendance.
Interestingly enough, I’ve read a post by Chris Betcher (Betchaboy) tonight that has made me think – always a good thing! It’s called Going Live vs Doing Life and I find myself agreeing with Chris’ sentiments. The gist of what he is saying is that perhaps we need to be thinking about immersing ourselves and appreciating the real life experiences we are having rather than focusing on how we disseminate the experience to the world. Probably best to block quote from Chris’ post;
I could be completely wrong, and maybe some of the Twitterers will leave a comment about how they deal with the whole mobile tweeting thing, but I always find that in order to tweet about what I’m doing I have to mentally stop doing it. To me, it’s more than just multitasking, it’s about mental timeslicing and taking your attention off the here-and-now of what’s actually taking place around you in order to tell the Twitterverse about what’s going on around you. This is not meant to be a criticism, and I’m glad that people do it so that others who wish they were there can get an insight into what’s going on, but I hope that folks find the balancing point between actually living the event and spending all their energy helping the event “go live”.
I know that I find it hard to do the mental timeslicing that Chris refers to. Even last night when I was participating in the discussion I had to focus on what I wanted to say and lost some of the thread of Konrad’s presentation and even the chat. I think John Medina talks about the difficulties of trying to multitask in his book Brain Rules. I have a copy of it but haven’t found the time to read it (surprise, surprise, seeing as I’ve been up till all hours of late!!) – I must make this a priority!
Regardless, I’m very thankful to everyone in Texas at the moment who are making genuine efforts to share knowledge through this community. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- this is without doubt the best staffroom I’ve ever been a part of!
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 
Timeslicing vs multitasking – good point. It reminds me of some advice I heard years ago about parents who video their kids’ dance recitals, ball games, etc. – Experience the event itself, don’t just watch it through a viewfinder.
Nonetheless, I’m delighted and amazed that those of us who aren’t able to attend in person can pick up some of the flavor and content via these tools. What an age of wonders we live in…
I am also thankful for the people who made Konrad live. If it weren’t for them we would not have been able to engage in the conversation and discussion that we did.
This past weekend, my wife was out of town to a conference for her work. She hates being away from our family. In her absence, she missed several adventures my two sons and I had; However; I took my phone, and took some pictures of what we were doing, and sent them to her phone and uploaded them to facebook. She still missed out, but not as much.
I think the craze is about sharing what we are doing with those we care about (twitterverse or family), either personally, or professionally. The fact that I could share those moments with my wife while she was away at a conference is awesome to me, and actually added to the experiences my boys and I were having.
Best Staff Room ever…I have never heard that…I think I might be starting to agree with you.
Thanks Jenny. Glad the post struck a chord with you and others. I’ve been away on the Gold Coast for a few days and I switched carry-on bags just before I left home. Unfortunately I forget to take the Flip camera out of the first bag and put it in the second so when we got to Surfers Paradise I reached into the bag for the Flip and it wasn’t there. Although I was annoyed at myself at first, in hindsight I’m actually glad I didn’t carry it around with me everywhere and instead just focused on enjoying our time away. Of course I regret having no video of the event, but in the big scheme of things it’s really no big deal.