You Are What You Tweet

You are what you tweet or according to this infographic – what I’m not is very interesting or very social.  Ms. Jones obviously has more pink dots than I have blue ones.  Gwyneth Jones, aka The Daring Librarian, and I have been social media buddies (thanks to Second Life) before the Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.  Gwyneth does love her Twitters as seen in the infographic from Visual.ly. Dear Capt. Red, I do envy your trailblazer boots! Hah! However, I have cool cargo pants (really do in RL…cargo pants that roll up into capris) If that green card in my hand is memory RAM or graphics card – Score! Just blew out the dust bunnies on the Dell desktop and upgraded the works. Ok, I’m not the social maven duchess that Gwyneth is, but that’s okay with me.  After ISTE2011, I was in a whirl attempting to keep up with my new PLN.  Finally, woke up one day to acknowledge I love networking for the information I read from my Google Reader feeds.  Instead of tweeting, I pull out my iPad, click on Flipboard, and send links to my Dropbox or Diigo.  Sometimes, I find a new interesting blog so I wander back to Twitter and add that writer to my “follow” list.  This personal learning network suits me.  I can even do a quick read on my phone app during lunchtime at the schoolhouse.  I’m just fine with my size of Twitter network.  Gwyneth is happy with her Twitters.  It’s all good – though how she keeps up is beyond me!

As a professional educator, you really need to find your comfort zone for networking.  My mantra has always been “Pick one tool and learn how to use it.” Pick Twitter for the micro-blogging, use Google Blog search to find new connections, and aggregate into a Google Reader. Time to make a Back-to-School resolution to grow yourself a personal learning network outside of your classroom walls.

I’ll leave the super tweeting to Gwyneth and the tribe. However, I just couldn’t resist this! Take a moment to read Gwyneth’s Lady Gaga Librarians Unite.

*Infographics are created on Visual.ly – a new place to find cool infographics, create a Twitter feed infographic, and sign up to be on the list for when you can create your own infographics with data uploads.  I can’t wait to try it with my high school’s state test scores from last spring.  Hopefully, Visual.ly will be “live” by the time my honors and English III students will be writing their persuasive research papers.  What a great place to find data and make their own infographics.