My three years of blogging and tweeting

For three years, I have made blogging and tweeting the core of my learning. Without a doubt, blogging and tweeting has become the heart and soul of my professional development.

Blogging and tweeting has allowed me to shift my learning from an event done to me to a process that I actively own and engage in almost every single day. My professional development is something I create for myself.

Twitter provides me with an opportunity to share with others that time and distance would normally not allow me to share with. Blogging provides me the opportunity to put my thoughts, questions and beliefs into words.

For the last three years, I've dedicated myself to blogging one piece of content almost everyday. This requires intense reflection.

Once I've shared something with others, they are kind enough to engage me with a comment or a tweet, which allows me to reflect and reconsider my thinking even more. This is invaluable.

In three years, my blog has:

• over 1300 posts
• almost 4000 comments
• over 1 million pageviews

In three years, my Twitter has:

• almost 10,000 followers
• I follow 270 of the coolest people on Twitter
• over 25 000 tweets

Blogging and tweeting has provided me with opportunities to further my learning that without blogging and tweeting wouldn't have likely happened:

• I interact and learn with many people form around the world who share a passion for teaching and learning.
• I co-edited a book on De-Testing and De-Grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardization with Paul Thomas.
• I interact and learn with some of my favorite education authors and speakers.
• I read and write more about education in the last 3 years than I did in my previous 10 years of teaching.
• I receive numerous emails from educators and parents who want to engage in a conversation about how we can change school.
• I keynoted a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• My blog acts as a curator for all the cool stuff I learn. My learning is always at my fingertips.
• I receive invitations to write articles for education magazines and to do radio interviews.
• I hosted a series of professional development events on Skype where I presented through a translator for teachers from Estonia.
• I was appointed to the Alberta Teachers' Associations Strategic Planning Committee.

But most of all, I have developed a network of people that I trust and respect. These connections fuel my learning. I can't overstate how important it is to my learning that I have these connections.

While I can see how all of these connections have influenced my learning, I've come to understand that I will never really know what kind of an impact my sharing will have on others. Sharing is funny that way.

And so this concludes my third year of blogging. I'm going to go off-line over the holidays. That means no Twitter and no blogging.

Happy Holidays!