A Tale of Two Twitterverses

A funny thing happened to me recently. Now that I'm on vacation I've been using Twitter a lot more (sorry for all those extra tweets everyone!) and during very different times than my normal schedule. As I have a pretty heavy workload during the day, I'm usually on Twitter at night after I finish being a Coordinator, Mom, and Wife. That means I'm not cracking open my TweetDeck until 10 or 11 at night.

Now, during my North American summer holidays, I have LOADS of time during the day to surf, update, and explore Twitter. And a funny revelation happened to me. It started with the recent relocation of a friend and twitter pal of mine (@amichetti) to my old home in Singapore. Now that she's moved there, it's like she's vanished from my Twitter radar! Unless I specifically do a search for her or dedicate a column to her, her witty banter that I'm used to seeing throughout the night is no longer visible.

That got me thinking.... what else am I missing over there in Asia where I know so many amazing and dedicated teachers who are on the forefront of educational technology? Because I was up late at night I would see the daily tweets of my friends and technology gurus over there but not any more. They provided some amazing insight into the various issues and struggles that are happening in their educational contexts. And those contexts are VERY different than the ones that are currently in the media here in North America.

Click below to read more!

So, what's the mashup into my context? I realise that I need to model the exact behavior that my school curriculum (IB PYP) and I so strongly believe in- International Mindedness. I'm going to make a concerted effort from now on to set up some lists and columns with those amazing Eastern Hemisphere people and tweet their insights more often. I'm also going to be more proactive in commenting on and promoting their wonderful blogs to help spread the word on what they are doing.

By doing this I'm hoping to accomplish a few important goals:

To model the philosophy I believe in regarding international mindedness
To promote the issues and concerns of our fellow educators in other contexts
To remind myself that my issues aren't the only pressing ones out there
To share amazing insights with my worldwide PLN

Below is a short list of some great educators and blogs in the Eastern Hemisphere if you would like to join me in helping merge the two twitterverses.

People to follow:

@amichetti @tsbray @RobinThailand @Tsherwood @john_larkin @whatedsaid @KLBeasley @SBradshaw

Blogs to follow:

http://www.larkin.net.au/

http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/

http://kerileebeasley.com/

Have you found the alternate-twitterverse phenomenon too? How have you bridged the gap between them? Do you have any Eastern Hemisphere based educators that you want to recommend?

Jessica :)

Photo Source: woodleywonderworks

Post Update: 24 July: I created a twitter list in my twitter account that you can follow containing the names mentioned above as well as other ed-tech focused educators in the Eastern Hemisphere.