In the past few weeks, I have found connections to my government through several tools I use online to connect to my own professional learning communities. I have not been into the political spectrum as much as a caring citizen should. I have taken government and politics for granted for many years – choosing to stay out of it and away from it. Even during the presidential campaigns, I chose to stay away from the debates and away from the news in general.
I don’t consider myself to be ignorant of the world around me. While I shy away from televised news, I have stayed in the loop through world news on my satellite radio, blogging, online discussions, and a few book recommendations.
All this to say, that now I am connecting to real time discussions about our government and processes through several resources posted online. Just this morning, I started following #dipnote which is the US Department of State on Twitter. I even went to their blog and signed up to receive RSS notifications of their blogs, comments, and video posts.
I have signed on and even posted on change.gov which is President-Elect Obama’s website for gathering input from all of us in the United States.
I guess the point of this post is to say that there are ways to reconnect to change. I am excited about the possibilities of the new President and the change I am already seeing in the communication plans. I am excited to see Web 2.0 embraced by not only the President but the different departments in our government. It is exciting to hear the discussion of these tools I have used for years and not to hear “what a waste of time” in the same sentence. I feel like we have been on the outside and the fringe for a while using these things only to be made fun of for trying.
Exciting times are not on their way. They are here now and we have an opportunity to share with others how they can reconnect with their own government and state agencies. We have the opportunity to show people in our lives how they can use Twitter, blogging, podcasting, RSS, etc. beyond just subscribing to educational resources for their classrooms. They can now connect to their world.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. If you are traveling, be safe!
