Blogs on Education Trends

As is often the case with any large group online, #edchats can be impossibly frustrating for anyone who isn't ADD. With tweets flying everywhere and asynchronous discussions peppered with @,#, and !, it looks more like a cartoon expletive than any sort of useful dialog.

It is to help translate all of this that we've been offering these short summary blogs. But, as I found out this week when our guest bloggers fell through, it becomes a bit like the blind men and the elephant. The summary below is what I got out of it. Someone else probably heard an entirely different set of discussions. Thus is the chaotic beauty, stilted poetry and maddening non-linearity of Twitter.

But Twitter - like the Edutopia community, and Facebook, and myriad other online communities - can also be a powerful tool to facilitate communication within a "personal learning network" or PLN. One's PLN consists of colleagues and contacts around the world who offer support, feedback, and collaboration. Or, one could argue, instigate reform. But how?

Most people won't argue with the statement that our current education system's primary goals are not to ignite/support educators' passions. With standardized testing, budget cuts, Race to the Top and on and on, how do educators hold onto the passion of teaching?

Teacher Derrall Garrison (known as @derrallg on Twitter) gives an honest perspective of a passionate teacher in a not-so passionate world. Here's his summary and opinion of this week's edchat.

--Betty Ray, Community Manager (@EdutopiaBetty) and Elana Leoni, Social Media Marketing Coordinator (@elanaleoni)

It is Thursday March 4th, "Day of Action to Defend Public Education" here in California and in states across the country. I'm making my way through the crowd of thousands in the massive square in front of City Hall in San Francisco.

Editor's Note: Don't miss David's dispatch from Day 1.

My second day at the CoSN Conference, also known as Consortium of School Networking, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in northwest Washington, D.C., was almost as enlightening as the first. Especially, when I discovered that the Shoreham Hotel is where the Beatles stayed at the height of their Beatlemania tour in 1964.