Community, Networking, and Tech

This post touches on two interesting points of inspiration for me--a rehearsal on Sunday, and Gerol's comment on my post yesterday.

I'll start with the rehearsal.  I am a member of a small Acapella group.   One of the other women in the group, R, often hosts rehearsal at her house.  So I wander in to her house on Sunday, early to rehearsal, and a bit pensive after the CANE meeting.  She and I are chatting before rehearsal starts and I notice a book, which has also recently become topical to my life, lying on her floor.  So I ask her about the book.  She laughs, and says "Oh no!  I forgot to put it away."  We keep talking about the book, and realize that this is now topical to both of us.  "Oh my gods--Can we keep talking about this?" she asks.  "It's so weird to have to approach a huge, life changing decision without someone else to talk to!"  I agreed completely...and voila, we now have each other to talk to. 

Gerol expanded on the topic of connections and networking, with respect to human foundations for the connections we're making.  Yesterday, he wrote: "If students don't learn how to approach each other, or teachers, or peers, or colleagues, they bear a deficit that no video lecture will fill."

Isn't that the truth?!  People need to learn how to approach other people face-to-face as well, or if necessary, to put a personal touch on technological interaction.

We can build communities via technology, sure, but our students need to know how to interact with the face-to-face world as well.  Even for--actually especially for--those "difficult conversations."  In the case of my friend R and I, my one question and a short conversation, built an even stronger friendship and community bond.

Take the case of my co-editor-ship of the CANE newsletter.  In perusing the book selections CANEPress had available, I was just making small talk with a fellow teacher about reaching out to other teachers and how sad it was the the old CANE newsletter had died.  Suddenly, she mentioned she wanted to start a blog, but really didn't want to go it alone...and bam! We were engrossed in what would become a 45 minute conversation about how we would do this and could we make it the new CANE newsletter.  We kept in touch after last years' CANE conference, and made it happen. 

I often bring these stories/experiences back to share with my students.  What happened at the latest conference?  What cool ideas did I get from other teachers?  Like Gerol said, it helps model for the students.

So, in this world, full of technology, how do we build more community?  How do we network?  How do we teach students the importance of networking and personalization?