Thanks to Jamie Portman for his cracking endorsement of the power of Twitter found here: http://www.jamieportman.com/blog.

Jamie has been part of my personal learning network for a long time now. I’ve been through the lurking stage with him right through to mentions, DMs and emails to share resources with him (which reminds me that I have some more for him I MUST send – sorry for the delay, Jamie!). Next, I really hope I’m going to be able to visit and see the amazing work of Jamie, his staff and students since a fire ripped through the school buildings at Campsmount, Doncaster in December last year.

Please do follow Jamie on Twitter @jamieportman – he’s got some great follows and followers and is leading some very innovative, pragmatic learning in his school.

The real power of Twitter is all that I’ve said, but It’s also enough to bring me out of my self-enforced silence during my holiday in an attempt to SWITCH OFF. I try really hard to relax and clear my head when I take time off but to be honest, it doesn’t really work.
Just today I have been reading “Over-schooled but Under-educated” by John Abbott. I continue to lurk on Twitter during my ‘silent holiday’ (I’m not supposed to be interacting in this ‘switch-off’ mode) and this afternoon, I have researched a number of educational readings…I’m currently checking out a range of different teaching models including the Autonomous Learner Model and the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model (http://www.edtech.vt.edu/edtech/id/models/cog.html) with which I’m undertaking some action research in our ‘Confident Communicators’ Project’ (see previous post) at the moment and will be talking about at a number of conferences in the next few months.
I’ve also done some work on my book plus I’ve downloaded Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA (www.thersa.org), which has been added to the RSA Animate series – check it out if you’re interested in finding out about intrinsic motivation, with some powerful scientific evidence to support the case…it brilliantly enriches the TED talk (www.TED.com) he gives around the same issues.

I also went on a four mile walk this morning along Monmouth Beach, Lyme Regis and saw some spectacular fossils and the other side of the day involved a final circuit of the harbour and the Cobb. ‘Switching off’, it would seem, is very subjective…