Reluctant baby steps

Seldom have I experienced such academic frustration and total incomprehension of a subject.  Today I sat in my EdTech class feeling like it was being taught in another language.  Feeling, in fact, like it might be rocket science.  No fault of my professor.   It's just that I am a 1970's and 80's educated person who learned the Queen's English (the 80 something year old Queen's English) which doesn't include words like "diigo" or "twitter" or "livebinders.com".  I am wading through a thick fog of this strange new language feeling overwhelmed and disoriented.

But here's what I have gleaned so far:  in order to become connected with the best and biggest possible resource there is, it would behoove me to become versed in twitter.  I hate that I am starting to see the value in it but . . . I am starting to see the value in it.  I am only just beginning to figure out how to use truly excellent online resources and connect with some innovative educators that are sharing with each other, freely and generously using this medium.   

Today I made some tentative wobbly baby steps.  I connected f2f (which for people of my generation means face to face) with a teacher friend of mine, picked his brain and pilfered from his twitter community to find a few people to follow.  I spent a quick half hour looking through some of their tweets in a fairly aimless way and became overwhelmed by the sheer volume of good stuff out there.  The next small step will be to try to bring focus to my "twitter time" and to determine how to meaningfully expend energy finding resources (including technology) that will be helpful to me as a teacher.