I watched the archive of George Couros’  Becoming a Networked Educational Leader this morning. Before the session even started I noticed how many of the participants joining the session seemed to know each other. It made me reflect on what it really means to be connected in an online environment.

I joined twitter mid way through 2012 and follow a small number of people and organisations like Edutopia. This provides me with more than enough interesting comments and links to stimulating articles and blog posts. So many that I’ve lost count of the number I have saved in Pocket. I retweet fairly often, but I mainly reply to the people I already know personally. Sometimes others reply to my posts, sometimes I reply to theirs, but generally its one-way or a brief exchange. I find all of this really valuable, but I don’t feel connected, I don’t think I have an online PLN yet, bar the wonderful Clare Rafferty, but she is a colleague at work, so I’m not sure it counts. So when will I be able to say that I really am connected?

I posted this question on twitter, with the #etmooc tag, and am grateful to Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs) , @costerhout and Glenn Hervieux (@SISQITMAN) for their replies. They reassured me that I was on the right track, that building an online PLN does take time, and that one brick at a time is fine. Just like in real life, you meet lots of people, but only some will share the same interests, views and goals. It can take a while to find them. There is no doubt that being a part of etmooc has been a fabulous way to do this. I now subscribe to blogs that I didn’t know existed 3 weeks ago, and wouldn’t have known how to find, I have new people to follow on twitter. Despite sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the number of tweets produced each day, I am going to follow more people and reply to more tweets, read more blog posts and leave more comments. And I will be patient. As Ed Nagelhout says on his post Fatigue is a Good Thing (http://tinyurl.com/bk8s8ck), if make one good contact or find one good person to follow, it’s worthwhile.