Tech Task #3: The Search Begins

"What's your favorite kind of music?" my friend David asks around a cheese sandwich. We are roadtripping across the prairies, listening to an old Steve Bell tape. The tape player on the Taurus cuts out every 30 seconds. Every few minutes it goes completely beserk with static, then resumes playing. That was annoying for the first 2 hours, but by now I've gotten used to it.

"I like mellow stuff. Piano. Violin. That kind of thing."

"Oh really?" he is nonplussed, but polite.

"What do you like?"

"I'm more into rap and electronica."

"Hm." I am similarily disenchanted.

Fast forward 3 hours... David finds a playlist of 25 most played songs, and we blast it through the defective sound system. True to form, the first song was quintessential rap/electronica... followed by 24 definitively mellow tunes.

"Don't like mellow songs, eh?" I tease him.

David laughs (that's why we're friends. he always sees the humor in the situation).

"I guess I like them more than I thought. Wouldn't it be funny to see a playlist for other parts of life, like '25 most told stories' or '25 most eaten foods?' "

I tell this little tale because it's a concept I've been chewing on recently. How much of what we believe about ourselves is true? What would it be like to  have a computer data printout about our real likes, dislikes, habits, etc?

For example, who (out of 6 billion people out there) could really be my best friend? Is it someone in Bangledesh? Old? Opposite gender? One thing I'm sure of: I'm sure the answer would surprise me. And I'm sure I could never pick him/her out based on my own intelligence.

I thought of this again as I searched for bloggers and twitter users to follow. It's like looking for an earring clasp on the beach. Somewhere out there are people who are blogging/tweeting about things I would be FASCINATED by, and I don't know how to find them!

But. I have a theory about finding kindred spirits online. First, find people in your area of interest. And follow them. Pay attention to who's following them. And follow them. And so on. The first blogs you follow may not be the ones you keep following, but at the very least they are clues that lead you to new networks.

 

from www.toptenreviews.com





So here are the fruits of my blog-finding labour today:
http://leoxicon.blogspot.ca/ ... teaching EAL from a lexical viewpoint. Some of his principles challenge my methods of teaching language. It's good to re-assess one's presumptions about teaching every so often!

http://flipyourclassroom.blogspot.ca/ ... flipped pedagogy. This one caught my eye because of the reference in Dean's first class about "flipped classrooms." It's a highly visual style of blogging, which really catches my attention!

www.thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/... I found this one last fall while I was interning in grade 1, but decided to add it to google reader today. My favorite feature is the plethora of writing and math instructional strategies!

I chose one about teaching EAL, one about technology in the classroom, and another about teaching primary grades. Basically, I've started three "mine shafts" to start excavating. Here's the exciting part (to me): I discovered the power of using twitter! A basic google search on "EAL blogs" profited me nothing. So I jumped on twitter and searched with some hashtags: #tesol, #esl, #tesl and discovered a whole host of people! I am now following... ahem... 38 people! That's a start! I've tapped into a network of ESL/literacy professionals from Alberta. The challenge now is to devote some time every day to keeping up with google reader and expanding my twitter network.

What are your favorite education blogs?