You Are Affecting The System

Whenever a system is affected by an outside agent, its total energy changes. In general, a force is anything that causes a change. When a force causes a change in the energy of a system, physicists say that work has been done.  It is this work, this change in energy that has most recently caught my attention.  For it is my own work, my own energy that has changed and the outside agent that has caused this transformation is you.  You, the members of Twitter.

Yes you have changed me, my energy and my work for being a teacher.  You, this outside agent, have affected my energy for teaching like little other before you.  Admittedly, as I lay here thinking about how best to describe the influence people like you have had on my professional learning, this seemed like a pretty intellectual metaphor, an original thought.  But it turns out, as I searched further into the role change plays in various systems, I found another man for whom I have a great respect, had used a similar metaphor first.

Division Principal, Leadership Consultant, Ed Blogger and "change agent" to many of us, George Couros wrote eloquently in his blog The Principal of Change on the opportunity change gives and how our students can benefit from it (side note: while writing this post his brother and ed leader Alec Couros just followed me...crazy).  While our outside agents may have a different focus within our posts, the reality is that both our systems had changed as a cause of them.  While this area is of great interest to me, I will say thank you to George and get back to You now.

You are my Tribe, my educational army, you are my outside agents.  Why you?  Well as we indirectly share and support each other randomly through in a 140 characters or less, or directly through inspiring #edchats you are changing me.  You energize and inspire me to new and innovative ways of approaching education.  You provide guidance and I can turn to you for support at any time.  You showed me that there are others who care as I do and want to push the envelope.  You value and accept my passions and opinions.  Through you not only has my Technological competency grown, but so has my Pedagogical and Content Knowledge as well.   You are my Professional Learning Network and I thank you.

I remember when we first met, not at a school or some seedy bar, but on Twitter.  I was at a conference and these two great guys Tom Whitby and Steven W Anderson told me about you. I was naive to the power this platform held, but they were speaking my language and so I listened to them. It was a pretty overwhelming place with roughly 350,000 tweets sent every minute.  But then I started to find you, my Sherpas, and I followed you and began to learn.  I had begun to change.  After following you for a while, I felt confident enough to share my voice and soon you began to follow me too.  

I have driven my family to the brink of insanity with my regular sharings of new strategies and ideas I am learning.  The phrase "did you know?" or "this year I NEED to" escape my lips regularly.  You have really ignited what was already a pretty significant fire in me.  

The power of our network is evident, when #edchats are regularly trending and according to Twitter's number over 1% of all tweets are education related.    

While researching the Characteristics of Effective Professional Development, collaboration and self-directed learning were of great importance in all the articles I read.  The feedback on this topic I received seemed to support this as well as the advent of apps like Tweechme supporting #edchats and teacher involvement on Twitter.  This growing community we are all a part of is something special and has become an integral part of self-directed learning for hundreds of thousands of teachers around the world.  We are a global community affecting change on our systems and the systems of those we are connected to.

You are my 297 members and growing PLN.  You are my professional learning and inspiration.  You are my Sherpas and followers.  You are the change.