An Hour a Day

Taking a break from the emails, planning, infrastructure, maintenance, budget, assessments, meetings, evaluations, Professional Development, policy development, and the long list of other things to be done in a day is difficult, but essential for my learning.  I recently realized that I must continue to maintain the balance at work, that I am able to maintain in my family and life.

I have always wanted to attempt to keep my head above the water coming rapidly from the giant fire hose of information by dedicating at least an hour a day to my Personal Learning Network. Today is dedicated to reviewing hundreds of resources I "saved" for a day which would allow me to spend an appropriate amount of time on them.  I decided to focus on building Personal Learning Networks and identify resources which could help me in this process.  Today I focus on Twitter.

I have used Twitter for some time, but have primarily been a consumer of the wisdom provided by others. Favoriting, retweeting, and increasing the number of experts I can follow with similar interests, duties, and those who consistently provide information which is helpful.  It seems as if there is no time in the work day to really concentrate on the resources, and only now am I thinking in a way that incorporates all of the elements possible when I am planning for the upcoming school year.

My hour a day has ben spent reviewing resources and pinning them to my boards on Pinterest http://pinterest.com/kallen214  (very addicting), and in ScoopIt http://www.scoop.it/u/kallen214 (awesome curation tool for me).  I set time aside to identify resources so that I can go back and do more than a spot-scan of the wealth of information found.

I am also working on the PFN - "Personal Family Network" with Instagram.  During a recent vacation, we were all talking pictures with our phones trying to recapture memories that would last a lifetime. We wanted to share them with other family members and posted them on Instagram.  It quickly turned into instantaneous fun and a competitive contest for the best waterfall and wildlife pictures.  This Personal Family Network was a teaching opportunity for the kids and adults who had not used Instagram before.