Inspiration has Returned!

I promised myself that I would head to bed at 10pm last night (I stayed up to watch the Oscars with my mother last night and still had to drive home and organize myself afterward) and then the inspiration bug hit.

I actually came home from work, completed some of the work that had to be done, had dinner, and found myself listening to a colleague's take on her tweetchats with her Grade 11 Biology class on an ed pod cast. I have been following her on twitter since meeting her at a Smarter Science conference last June and had taken an interest in the idea - so I was excited to find out she had done this podcast. I think it was the perfect time to get myself reconnected with the online ed world and engage in something new. I had been feeling particularly disengaged from the passionate teaching world recently and somehow tonight made a turn for the better.

In past posts I have vented about technology in schools and how discouraged I felt about being technical and using it to connect with my students. So often we are discouraged by our union and school board about taking these paths, but the fact of the matter is - it is here to stay, and there are ways to do it safely! @EurekaTeacher is active proof - and I want to be a part of it.

Step one - tomorrow I will speak with my admin and make sure they are behind my initiative - to get my 3U Physics class on twitter and discussing concepts, without the numbers, from home (or anywhere on their smart phones!).

Step two - find out if there is a way I can access twitter from school so that we can discuss the idea of internet safety, twitter itself, protected tweets, spam, etc

Step three - host the first class tweetchat on motion!

Wish me luck! And please let me know if you have ideas, comments, questions, or concerns. It will be a learning experience and I will appreciate what others have to say on the topic.