One other thing, did I miss any mention of Flickr besides feed for comments? Is that not a core app? Given the amazing stuff with the 366 project, I figured that would be a perennial.

@Chris: you are officially out of your mind, I am becoming a bit scared of how smart you are.

The dangers inherent in naming appear in ancient stories; we are not the first to struggle with it. I find “PLE” much closer than “social networking” to describing what I am doing, which makes me grateful for the term.

So now it’s more like “Your PLE is some sub set of this giant net ocean, here’s a bit of my own cloud.” And in terms of your wish, to flesh out the tools, methods we use, then, I consider my blog a quasi map of my “PLE” because those are the things I have written about all along (with lots of other crap tossed in).

But I will drop my snark about it “just being diagrams” ;-)

For lhuff, I have no special guru insight to this stuff, and most of what I know is what I filter from others (aha, via my PLE!) A key for me when working with the doubtful, the worried, is jut to try and overwhelm them with all that’s out the, but aim for some small tool, resource, that is meaningful to them- “hit ‘em in their discipline” or for personal use (hence flickr- there is so much appeal for easily doing things with photos)… my variation of Curly’s Law (form City Slickers) to “find that ONE thing” which in this case opens the door to finding many more.

As far as the writing, I usually do one off shoot form the him, Ready Fire Aim posts. But there are times, like this one, that I actually worked on over a few days. I still write mostly draft and dont re-edit most. But its a personal decision on what your “blog voice” is– I seek to be conversational, casual, snarky, and not polished on purpose.

The time issue is something I cannot fix. Nothing “saves” time- time is en ever fix flowing thing, so its a matter of what we choose and what we make important. So I give up some sleep ;-) because for some reason, I feel *wrong* or out of sorts if I am not regularly posting something. So for me, I keep it going by mixing it up between quickies and longies. I do a lot of posts now via flickr’s Post to Blog feature.

Its a matter of finding what is your own style than trying to model someone else’s. And there is nothing wrong with infrequent thought pieces. And… its not going to be the appealing thing for everyone.

My biggest hurdle in blogging has been TIME. The frequent posting by “expert bloggers” as yourself is another element that intimidates me, makes me feel inferior.

I teach AP English Language and English 11. It seems I ALWAYS (screammmm!) have papers to grade, student blogs to read, lesson plans to create. In fact, as I sit here typing this comment, I really need to be grading and commenting on the remaining 26 blog posts and humpteen eCircles (literature circles discussing a text on their blogs) I must assess before Wednesday–the deadline for grades this quarter.

This issue of time seems to always rear its ugly head at the workshops I teach. When I explain that the best way to learn is to read other bloggers and then write–reflecting, connecting, evaluating, synthesizing–teachers complain they don’t have time. Some are just not committed or willing to devote the time, but some are like me: struggling to stay afloat, drowning more often than not.

I notice some of your posts seem to be long and polished (the metaphors in this one are superb) while others are quick bursts–in English-teacher-land what we’d call rough drafts. Perhaps, that’s my problem–I’m trying to publish only finished, polished pieces, which, of course, takes time. In fact, my last couple posts have taken me over two hours to compose, add hyperlinks, and publish.

Any recommendations?

Whatever the nomenclature, it is important to make the tools and strategies for using them transparent.

I teach a few workshops in my state. In my first attempts, a couple years ago, I felt inadequate to teach others about technology. I’ve realized that facilitating workshops is merely sharing what I’ve learned, making the tools and strategies I use transparent. In every session I lead, there’s always some that have never heard of Google Reader or Del.icio.us or wikis. Some who are intimated, thinking these tools are only for the techy. I love their excitement when they see how simple it is to publish to the Internet, to connect with other educators.

Thanks for sharing. You don’t have to wait a year to drop me a comment–I’d love a bit of that adrenaline rush!

<my blog: JustRead!