Thoughts on my Digital Community

Last week I flew to Omaha to meet with my cohorts. During the full day of keynotes I looked around at the other teachers cheering "Good job! Good job! Good Job Good Job! G double o. D, J-O-B, Good Job, Good Job!" and thought, yep these are my people. I prefer the term cohorts to 'tribe.' I remember conjugating the word during Latin 9 in high school. It really resonates with me because we had a group of four of us who supported each other. We worked in a group and each person had their job. We were a latin cohort. My cohorts are the people who get me and together we encourage each other to learn. After reading the articles written by Goins I immediately related to the person who cut their tribe way down. I prefer a few quality contributors to my blog comments or Instagram feed as opposed to a legion of followers. I think the best way to grow your following is to lead by example. If I am an active contributor of meaningful comments I am adding to my community. What about you, do you want a big tribe or a few quality followers?

What Ramona Quimby can teach us about VoiceThread

Our class has been reading about Henry Huggins and his pesky neighbor Ramona Quimby. In the latest chapter, Ramona's tv idol, Sheriff Bud, said her name on air and told her to stop pestering Henry. The class was as shocked as Ramona. Sheriff Bud said her name! So what does that have to do with VoiceThread? VoiceThread is a site that allows users to post a file and comment on it. Comments can be audio or video. The file can then be shared and those users can also comment on it. While sharing this site with my PLC someone made the recommendation for book reports to be done this way. When kids need to find a new book, they can look and listen through the Voice Threads and hear recommendations, plus add their own comments. Sheriff Bud endorsed products every day on his program and Ramona told her mom to purchase those products. Voice Thread book reports would make great recommendations too.