The TWAIN blog

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!

November 4 marked the introduction of a new president-elect for our nation. It also marked the end of equality in California as defined by the act of marriage for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. The campaign funding for both opponents and proponents raised $35 million for proponents and $37 million for the opposition to Prop 8. Close gap for funding. The vote was close as well: 52% voted yes for Prop 8 and 48% voted no.

Whether you are for Proposition 8 or against it doesn’t matter here. This message is about the rise of a civil rights movement under our noses but using the technology to connect nationwide. I ran a search on Facebook this morning and found over 108 groups already setup to join members of Facebook to petition against “Proposition H8″. Over 500 with the use of the words “Proposition 8″ and another 500 using the phrase “Prop 8″. I ran a Google search on these titles and found many wikis, blogs, websites, and videos for and against Proposition 8. I also found sites that were actively recruiting for future planned events for protesting these causes as well.

This past weekend, major cities (and some smaller ones as well) had protesters at their capital buildings voicing opposition to California’s reversal of marriage rights. How did all these protesters organize? And what’ next for them?

They organized using the same tools we are using in education – Web 2.0, social networking, social streaming. They too are part of the “Human Network” as Cisco calls it in their commercials.

Without listing different sites and all different perspectives here, just know that there is a network supporting or protesting the movement for same-sex marriage nationwide. There is a civil movement taking place around us. And they are planning more events and more ways to spread the message using these social networks and social impact resources.

Imagine 1955 if Rosa Parks had a wiki or a Twitter about her day on a bus. What if the Million Man march in Washington was advocated on a NING, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.? How would the anti-war demonstrations of the Vietnam war gone if they had Web 2.0 tools?

Beyond just this current movement, our president-elect has plans on his site to deliver a weekly video state of the union address using YouTube embedded videos. He already used Twitter to cover his movements in the campaign. Now, he is embracing change using the technology tools.

Now is the time to get our teachers and administrators onboard. The world is passing all of us by when we are limiting the access to these tools to our students and teachers. The world is connecting around us and we are still in the “one-room schoolhouse” mentality. A civil-rights movement is underfoot here in the US of A. What better time to introduce the idea of collaborative network environments than with the movement of civil action? Now is the time to share about “Personal Learning Communities” as these protesting communities are developing and working together world-wide.

Now is the time for our teachers, administrators, students, etc. to connect to connecting.