Passion

Lyn Hilt's ideas on passion and more specifically, the quote she included from Seth Godin, struck me the most when reading through the different posts on the awesome Project PLN10 Openzine. PLN10Zine The key word that hit home was focusing on what is . . . important.    


Passion is a desire, insistence, and willingness to give a gift. The artist is relentless. She says, "I will not feel complete until I give a gift." This is more than refusing to to do lousy work. It's an insistence on doing important work. (Godin, 2010).


I think that most of education's supposed woes could be solved fairly easily by just focusing on what's important.  When we get to spend at least half our time doing what we feel is important, it makes life easier, more fun, and really more productive. 


Here's an example.  The students watched some TED Talks last Friday.  One by Daniel Pink talked about the "Surprising Science of Motivation."   Watch it at http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html


Lia H., one of my students shared these comments on our class blog.  Check it out at http://wms.podcasts.westside66.org/users/skroenke/blog/
"I thought that Daniel Pink's new (or old, apparently) take on the way businesses should be run was very innovative. One example I can think of that may give further proof to this theory is our Choice Project in English. It was a lot more fun to be able to write about whatever you wanted and present it in your own way. We probably would've been willing to do it even if we'd get a B without doing the work; we could do something WE cared about. That's a good argument for 20% time and the fact that incentives aren't as much needed as opportunities to be creative."


So, basically, Daniel Pink, Lia (a bright young mind, and I all agree that life is about finding our passion and having time to do the "important work."  That's what it is to be passionate.




Zappos.com and Tony Hseih's book Delivering Happiness happen to be two of my favorite examples of where doing what people are passionate about creates good business sense as well as all around good living and happiness. 

  

ROI

       ROI- No, I'm not talking about a man with a name that rhymes with boy or getting mixed up with the Koi, the name of the fish we can see desperately trying to gobble fish pellets we buy with quarters at the turn crank machines at the zoo, I'm talking about one little business term I know.  Yep, just one term.  I often like to think about what I might be like working in a career in the business sector, but usually just for a little bit.
       Regardless of whether people work in business or education, ROI or Return on Investment is something it seems most people pay at least a little attention to especially in terms of input to output or time management.  Return on investment is a topic related to social networking too, but maybe not in ways people might think of first.
        In John Hagel III and John Seely Brown's article, "Five Tips for Smarter Social Networking," they recommend expressing authentic vulnerability, mixing professional and personal, provoking, promoting, and actively seeding, feeding, and weeding."  Especially in promoting, seeding, feeding, and weeding, it seems the old maxim, "you get out what you put in" is true.  However, I liked and agree with the two Johns' idea that it's important not to promote myself but to promote others.  When people take the time to create genuine relationships and share, they will benefit greatly.  Just last night at the Bookworm, I saw the International Intrigue Book Club holding a discussion with the author of their latest book.  What's interesting is the group didn't contact the author; the author contacted them.  He received a Google Alert that they were discussing his book and offered to chat with them.  In the article, "Principal's Perspective" by John Hudson, a similar situation happened.  William M. Ferriter on Twitter noticed John's biography said he was interested in his book.  Ferriter wrote to john and offered to collaborate as well as posted on John's Blog when he wrote about it.  Ferriter as well as the author at the Bookworm both understand the value of hearing others' ideas.  
         This week I hope to take the advice and examples given in this article and work to promote others without worrying about my Return on Investment, but knowing that building relationships, promoting and provoking others, and "feeding" will create positive results. 




What do you think? Is this advice sound? Do you have examples of where and how it has worked? What other practices would you add?

PLN Cultivation

Teacher Suggested Topic: In the second week of cultivating your PLN, what are some things you’ve already learned? Are you seeing possibilities in Twitter?




New learning for me since the first minute of this class mostly centers around Diigo, the social bookmarking site. Having crashed my computer just a few times in the course of my professional career, this site sounds lifesaving. I confess I haven't mastered the site or become a daily user yet, but I'm confident I will in a month or so.
Although I've had a Twitter account for a year or so, I learned how to do some new things including using hash tags for groups and shortening addresses using bitly. The URL shortener makes me feel more like a pro and less like an amateur because now instead of being a parasite living off of what everyone else posts, I now can be a contributing member of the network by sharing awesome articles I find or my own blog posts. It was great to see Cybraryman's list of hash tags and chats. I saw at least a few I'd like to sit in on at some point in the future.
Mostly, I'm seeing how all the social learning things are connected. I can use Facebook and Twitter to advertise my blog. I can use my blog to find more Twitter followers,etc.
Also, Twitter helps me find things to read online I wouldn't normally know. For example, one of my favorite articles in the past week was on Justin Tarte's blog about Daniel Pink's book, "A Whole New Mind." He described the movement from farmers workers to factory workers to knowledge workers and on up to our current concept workers. He also summarized six main aptitudes teachers might adopt to be educators of the 21st Century including Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning.
Overall, I'm enjoying having at least three hours a week dedicated to sitting, browsing, thinking and dreaming about how to incorporate social learning, 21st Century learning, and technology into my life and teaching.

If you're not learning, you're dead, so keep going.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Social Learning Class

     Last night was my first night of my new class called Social Learning.  Our teacher let us know the main purpose of the class is to learn how to share.  Throughout the class, my goal is to "share" on this blog at least one time per week.  The main topics will relate to schools, learning, technology, creativity, and fun.
     My first topic is actually a question I have pondered for some time and would love to hear some discussion about to get a better idea of how I should proceed.  When creating my online presence or digital footprint, what rhyme or reason should I apply to how I name myself when I am creating various accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, a blog, a Ning, etc.?  My mom has always reminded me of a phrase her father used, which is "Fools names and fools faces show up in public places."  When I think about that, I often think I'd like to remain anonymous, not too mention it would give me a little more freedom in what I write especially when it comes to controversial subjects.
     On the other hand, using my real name would keep it real and force me to display integrity in my writing.  I should be able to stand behind my thoughts, feelings, and views.  One downside to this is a security factor.  When a person has a last name as unique as mine and names his or her location, it is just so very simple for anyone to find out exactly where I live and lots of other information about me.  However, they can do that anyway, so maybe I don't need to stress about it.
      What do you think?  How did you decide how to name your different social networking items?  Did you take into consideration personal branding, your own mission statement, security?  Did you think it through or just choose something and your brand grew out of that?
       For now, for this blog at least, I will be me, Sarah Kroenke.  The views posted here are mine and not those of my family, my friends, or my employer.