Rabbit Holes

This past summer I found myself exploring an unknown path.  It started with an email towards the end of the school year from NCTM.  It made reference to some TEDTalks.  One of the TedTalks referenced was by Dan Meyer.  It piqued my interest and off I went exploring his bio link which led to his blog.  Blog?  Isn't that a place were people just spout off random stuff about whatever?  Rants about politics or showcasing to the world their random hobbies you didn't know existed?

Wow.  A normal person blogging, and sharing their thoughts on something I actually cared about.  I quickly found myself engrossed.  I couldn't seem to pull myself away from reading post after post.  What's this off to the right? A blogroll, hmmm.  Whoa! More normal people also sharing their thoughts on teaching.  I quickly made friends with Google Reader.  I had a hard time restraining myself from sharing every detail I read about with my wife.  This was the first of the rabbit holes.

I then saw in the comments people posting with an @ in front of their name.  What's this? Twitter ehh?  Isn't that were people post messages about the crappy or good food they just had at a restaurant?  Knowing how wrong I was about blogs I made my way into twitter. One person led to another and I found myself following and conversing with a group of teachers who all cared about bettering themselves in order to help students be successful. I couldn't believe the amount of collaboration that was occurring.

Recently two of those people @druinok and @mrhodotnet helped me with a couple of stat lessons.  I'll post about those next.  That was the push that got me started here.  I look forward to making the rabbit hole even deeper.