Let us pause as this writer screams to see that her Google Reader is still showing well over 1,000 unread post after having tackled many of them earlier this week.

Deep breath…

Okay, my intent had been to dig deep into the bowels of my reader to find one of my starred gems, however when I opened it to develop this post, one of the titles of a recent post jumped out at me: 50 Ways to Use a Projector in the Classroom. This post comes from the blog, Langwitches created by Silvia Tolisano, who I greatly admire. She is known, to me at least, for her practical blog posts, which I have always found informative.

This particular post is cuts right to the heart of the title and is a subject about which I have been thinking about recently. One of the issues that I have noticed in my district is that teachers have been using LCD projectors mostly as a replacement for their overhead projector - something she mentions in the post. She goes on to describe the process of how they adopted the LCD’s and how they have begun mounting them. I really liked hearing about this because it’s nice to hear about where other schools are in utilizing various types of technologies.

Silvia then speaks of offering professional development on uses for the LCD projector at one of their monthly workshops. I love the idea of monthly workshops and wish that I could implement this myself, but I would really need people in the schools that I could count on to redeliver this instruction. Yet another item to add to my list of things to do. But given the practicality of her suggestions, which she adapted from a discussion on Classroom 2.0, and her wiki, this will become a great resource for me to use in my district.

As for the second post that I’d like to share, I found this great post by Jennifer Jones of Injenuity. I only wish there had been time to read it before I did my presentation at GaETC. Had that been the case, I think I may have changed the approach I took just a bit. Why? Because in her post, titled “The Job of Personal Learning”, she approaches the building of a PLN by looking at it as a job. I knew that building a PLN was work, knew that it takes time, and knew that you have to dedicate yourself to your tools of choice and to fostering the connections. Even knowing all of this, I didn’t think of it as a job, probably because I eat this stuff up. I quickly realized the benefits of my network and I was hooked!

This part really rocked me, that rang true with me (the grace of 20/20 vision after the fact) was this,

When I look at it as a job, I can see why introducing it to groups en masse doesn’t lead to successful adoption.

Yes, I enjoyed a rather self-depreciating laugh. After all, that’s exactly what I attempted to do. But hey, so did David Warlick and Steve Dembo, too. At least I was in good company, right? Of course. My expectations were a smidgen too high though. Yes, I am a glass 1/2 full kind of girl, but I believe in the power of positive thought. Yes, I thought I might could possibly start a PLN wave. I think perhaps it was more like a pebble dropped into a large lake though.

Regardless, Jen’s quote above is all too true. After reflecting on it, I realized that I have had much more success with colleagues becoming involved in aspects of building a PLN because I have been able to intimately demonstrate the power of my PLN and I have been able to, in effect, mentor them. Those who I have been able to do that with have stuck with it.