I love convocation. Bringing everyone in the district together as a connected community. The superintendent speaks about the district, giving us all common ground, common goals, and a positive message. Educational/motivational speakers gets us focused on the year and gets us thinking, laughing, and maybe willing to try something new.

This year’s speaker is +Darren Kuropatwa and I can’t wait to meet this Canadian educator. I’ve connected with him on Twitter as well as on Google Plus, Instagram, and Flickr. He makes his learning visible for me to see and I appreciate that. I’m already learning with him and I can’t wait to meet him face to face and listen to his message. This is the fun part–meeting those Twitter/Connected educators you learn with online.

One thought running through my head, no, galloping, is that without being connected as district educators on social learning networks, and email doesn’t count as connected because it’s not collaborative, this is the only time we’ll all meet together and learn together this year. What if we got connected through Twitter, Wikis, Google Docs, Google Plus, Flickr, and more? What if we could plan together even though we’re in different buildings or even simply different rooms on different schedules? The news is…WE CAN!