The “Official” Launch of Connect!

I need your help in building a dynamic network of teachers from around the country! Will you join Connect and share your teaching with others?

Here is a copy of a post I just added to our new network. It explains more:

Okay, I had this idea to create a social networking site for teachers at least a year ago. I fiddled and faddled around, trying to create something on my own and worried about so many little details and tried different solutions and…and…and.

This is where my perfectionism is annoying. In looking for web software to create my own social network I stumbled across Ning many, many months ago. I even found a very new and very small (maybe like 20 people) educator/technology-based network.

I thought, “Oh Ning would be easy, but its not totally right and honestly I think it looks kinda lame. Instead I fumbled with Joomla and Drupal (and learned a ton in the process) and then ultimately I came back to Ning this past summer to find it has some great features and found that really small educator/technology network was now huge! After tweaking with things off and on for months I have given up.

Progressive Educator Connect is not my network. It’s yours! It will never be perfect (at least I can’t make it so)! But, it doesn’t have to be. I just wanted an organic community where teachers could collaborate online in a way that often doesn’t happen in our schools. Add your stories, photos, videos of you teaching…share your teaching life, struggles and all. Together we can move forward!

I guess as a teacher I have control and perfection issues. I know the lesson I am constantly re-learning is the need to jump in with a new idea and new lesson…even when it is not perfect or totally complete. If I wait and wait and tweak it and work on it two things happen. One, the lesson never happens. Two, if the lesson finally happens, it needs to be changed a lot and a lot of my work was in vain because I was not creating it and working it out with my students, only myself. Teaching is such a relational thing and we (at least I) need to be connected and working with my students to be able to be the coach and guide they need.

So anyway, here’s to opening up the Connect community…finished or not…perfect or not…compete or not. Now, it is up to you to make this a great, vital resource for teachers everywhere!