To the issue of being too “tooly,” it’s an easy trap to fall into. We have to remember that many teachers have not heard of some of these tools, however, so building an “awareness level” about tools CAN be a very positive and important thing. That said, there also should definitely be lots of sharing about pedagogy and instructional use examples.

On that note, have you participated in the K-12 Online Conference? I think you’ll find many like-minded folks there, in those presentations and in the comments on sessions, and that may be a good PD source for you in the weeks and months to come. Try starting with Clarence Fisher’s keynote from 2007:
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=150

Also check out “More Than Cool Tools”
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=149

Design Matters
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=174

and

Initiating and Sustaining Conversations: Assessment and Evaluation in the Age of Networked Learning
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=166

I’ll be sharing a session tomorrow at the conference in the last session at 2 pm about K12Online, and hopefully providing time to discuss how blended PD from a source like K12online can provide an even deeper and richer PD experience in many ways from a F2F conference like we’re having this week in Hong Kong.

If I do that, I feel that I can be more free and authentic here on this blog. I’ve got nothing to hide if my work colleagues know that this blog exists.

But that’s just my hang-up, I guess. Oh, and don’t worry about open-ended and messy. Open-ended and messy is good. Kind of like learning.

I had always thought of it as something like not putting anything online that I wouldn’t put in an all-users email, but I think that Kate’s analogy is better. A blog is available to anyone, but it doesn’t call attention to itself in the way that an email or face to face conversation does.

@Paul: in an ideal world I think you are right, but the fact that blogs are so public changes the situation.

Justin Hardman, my close friend and new supervisor, had an interesting take on this – “don’t write anything negative”. Criticism needs to stay in-house.

In his view, an institution is failing if they are not providing employees with internal mechanisms for identifying and solving complaints / criticisms. If a teacher has to put their criticisms on a blog, that means that there are no administrators / supervisors inside the school who would listen or try to work toward a solution.

All of this leaves me at a slightly better place than where I was when I started. I think that the next step is to just start blogging and see how this feels.