Teacher Burnout and the Inbox

Learning how to handle the constant stream of information that flows into our inbox on a daily basis is essential if we want to prevent burnout from the inundation of technology.  Taking the following steps will help avoid burnout and lead to a successful venture leading and learning with technology.

How to avoid technology teacher burnout.

• Use Pull technologies (iGoogle and NetVibes) to bring content to your fingertips instead of wasting time going out on the internet and searching for information or visiting a multitude of websites.  Going to one place for online content saves time and energy.
• Set a start and stop time to check your PLN (Professional Learning Network) feed page.  Be habitual about checking in with your PLN daily and adhere to the stop time.  
• Change settings on some of your feeds when you get too busy.  Switching from a daily to a weekly setting may is easy to do on most sites and may ease the burden of email overload.   
• Make sure you schedule down time daily.  This may seem like a silly item to be reminded of but all too often taking care of ourselves is something we tend to put on the back burner.  

Keeping up with and connecting to a PLN is a rewarding and positive experience for those who learn to manage their PLN well.

Using Twitter and Finding People to Follow

People are always asking me why and how they should use Twitter. They've read about Twitter in the news and don't see anything worthwhile about learning what Brittany Spears or Oprah Winfrey are doing. To everyone I reply, "There is so much more."

Twitter helps grow your personal learning network. Personal learning networks are virtual spaces that employ aspects of social networking and blogging. They allow us to connect with others in our field and learn with and from them. They provide a safe and convenient place to ask questions whether we're in the information stage of gathering new ideas or in the implementation phase of new methods. Sue Waters does a nice job of detailing how to grow your PLN on her PLN Yourself Wiki.

Once you've created a Twitter account you'll need to find people to follow. There a few easy sites that help you do this very efficiently.

Mr. Tweet helps you identify relevant followers on Twitter, providing the reader with a glance at each person's profile and latest tweets.

Twellow works like yellow pages and allows you to find people to follow by occupation.

Twitter4Teachers is a wiki that lists teachers by content. It's a great resource all in one place. You'll even be able to add your name to the list if you join the wiki.

You can always do a simple Twitter Search to find people tweeting about a subject of interest. If you like what they have to say, start to follow them. I recently did this with the latest shuttle mission and ended up following one of the astronauts, Mike Massimino, while he was in space.

Finally, once you arrive at a person you'd like to follow, see who they follow. You'll never know who you might end up connecting with. Start with me if you'd like. This is the beauty of Twitter. Twitter is a global community sharing common interests and ideas of which you can instantly belong.