The conversations you have

I get the feeling sometimes that people think I just walk around all day at work talking. At times that may be an accurate description but to say we're "just talking" can cheapen the human interaction. For example here is a link was sent to me by a fellow member of staff. Nothing too remarkable there (about me getting the link that is, the topic of the link I have quite strong opinions of!) but here's the background...

"I remember we spoke about this [at a work event] sometime ago"

So what?

Well this was a conversation with a non-teaching member of staff about a topic that perhaps they would not usually need to take an interest in but did as a result of our chat.

So what?!

So the conversations you have are important. They get you thinking. Just as importantly, they can get other people thinking too, which, in an education environment can't be a bad thing. Can it?

Kneel at the robes of 'The Edublogger'

How I Use RSS To Make My Life Easier | The Edublogger

I’m really into RSS — a RSS power user may be an appropriate title since I grab every RSS opportunity to make my life easier and maximise my ability to interact effectively with others.

This is where it's at. In fact I would go further than The Edublogger and say that if it doesn't have RSS I am not interested. You don't have to become an RSS ninja but if you work on some basic moves it can allow you to keep track of things that you thought wasn't possible. The power of digital content for me as a teacher is in the filtering and retrieval of the information. Can I search it quickly to find what I want? If you have RSS feeds for each class showing wiki and blog contributions (posts, comments, edits etc) that you can filter by name, sort by keyword or even embed somewhere else (and have it update automatically) gathering "evidence of learning" is not such big deal. You just have to get the tasks right. But that's another post. Probably a series.
Invest some time, learn some "RSS kung-fu". You won't regret it.