It sure is a small world in this photo from a bird's eye perspective, inspired by today's Daily Shoot assignment #ds72. It seems to be that from any perspective in my life at the moment. The new year has started with a lot of serendipitious net connections - all thanks to Tania, alias @tsheko, and her legendary photoblog from last year, threesixtyfivephotos. Tania had taken part in the challenge of posting at least one photo per day for the entire year, and also uploaded them with interesting commentary in her blog. This is where I got the idea of starting my own 365-project this year. Not only did I become a member of the EdTech 365/2010 group on Flickr, but I also decided to run a separate blog alongside the Flickr collection.
Almost a month into it now, and I seem to have abandoned most of my other online activities in favour of the engaging conversations on Flickr. I haven't written anything in this old blog of mine, nor have I had more than an occasional quick glance at Twitter since before Christmas. I have had to admit that I'm not much good at online multitasking, especially with an increasing load of offline duties as well. Curiously, my online presence seems to develop in varying bouts of enthusiasm, but mostly with maximum 2 different bouts at any one time. It's good to know your limitations, as not everybody can be an almost 24/7 net communicator.
My activity in Flickr has paid off big time, though. I have made many wonderful new contacts, and right now it seems that I am jumping right into organizing a small-scare student photo exchange experiment with Tania (from Melbourne, Australia) and Marie, a.k.a. as @colemama on Flickr (from Naples, Florida). Think about it, 3 women educators from so far away, on three continents, suddenly finding each other, and, more or less on the spur of the moment, setting up a joint action plan! Isn't it amazing?
Even more amazing was that today, despite the big time differences, I managed to quickly have a real-time conversation with Tania on gmail, just by chance! It sure is a small world!
More about this endeavour as things begin to unfold.
4 comments:
Look what I found! :) I was going to try to set up a Google Map and you beat me to it! It was so cool to see the three of us on gmail simultaneously today/yesterday - sorry I missed the chat with you and Tania!
Wow Marie, how on earth did you find your way here?? I just had to blog about our connections today. It's been so great! I'm sure we could 'meet' each other on gmail again. I didn't notice that you were there, too, today. Sorry! I was in the middle of a lesson, and students were taking a vocabulary test when I was chatting with Tania. I felt slightly naughty... Maybe I shouldn't reveal this here...
You know what - I will share the google map with you and Tania, and then you can move your place marks to the exact right location, OK? I will put a picture of our school there, too, plus our school website, which is all in Finnish though, unfortunately. See ya!
Sinikka! Can you believe I haven't read your blog for ages and didn't see this post until today? Like you, I'm having trouble being on all online fronts, and tend to neglect some things as I get more involved in others. You've described our serendipitous collaboration and forthcoming journey very well; I'm really excited, and also grateful to have met and joined forces with you and Marie. I'm learning so much from both of you all the time, and I appreciate both your talents and passion.
Oh Tania, I can believe it so well. I don't seem to be very good at juggling too many online forums at the same time myself! Honestly, I can't imagine how some people do it - do they ever sleep?
I feel so lucky to have met you and Marie - both of you so competent with new tech, whereas I am a mere amateur, learning as I go along. For me, being a teacher has truly turned upside down with social networking in this new century. And it's all good and exciting, no nostalgia to go back to closed and isolated classroom work.
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