Connecting

My thoughts have been focused on connections a lot recently. And the more I think about them, the more I find. I feel that having a Connected Consciousness is going to be more and more crucial for educators. I see it in:

1. Connecting educators.  Our upcoming inaugural offering of a Certificate in eLearning Design and Development was initially created with community/technical educators in mind, but we were encouraged to offer clock hours for K-12 educators as well. We have, and they are signing up. The more I think about it, the more excited I become at how much sense it makes for us to be talking to each other, and how much we could benefit from sharing our experiences. 

2. Connecting elearning to our lives. It is not the "other" learning anymore. It is becoming what we do - even in our ground courses, it plays an important role. It is part of our everyday thinking, learning, and exploring, and we need to mentor our students as well as ourselves to eLearn eVeryday.   At zazzle (love that site!)  I created a poster to display at our school:

3. Connecting ideas. This is such a major force in eLearning - the ability to find inter-relatedness among subjects, specialties, and thoughts.  This is breaking apart our boxes and our thoughts are roaming the web free from many of the previous academic constraints of book bindings, budgets, and preconceived boundaries. Our twitters are intertwining in beautiful mosaics of inspiration and blog posts are creating little explosions of ah-hahs.  We can wander freely and pick a camping spot without worry - every spot is different, every spot has a great view, and they are all free.

eLearn eVeryday.  I think if I make that my 2014 resolution, it will be a great year.