Intimidation Part II

My last post tended to ramble a little bit and I think that I missed the point I wanted to make. So here goes round number two.

For the past few months, I have been working on creating my own Personal Learning Network (PLN). I subscribe to twenty-something blogs related, both directly or indirectly to teaching and business education. I also started using Twitter and mainly follow the same people there whose blogs I subscribe to. The main reason for all of this activity is to become more connected with teachers all over the US and the world.

But those connections cannot happen without action on my part. I haven't posted to Twitter for a few days now, and it's not because of the holidays. I just flat out don't know what to say. I feel very intimidated writing knowing that these very distinguished educators will be reading what I write. With Twitter, I feel out of the loop because I am not currently teaching. I feel something like a fraud. I also don't have a lot of classroom experience to help my form my opinions and thoughts on the various topics that come up in discussion either on Twiter or blogs. I have the same feeling with commenting. I read an excellent post by Chris Lehman and I clicked on the comments. I had some thoughts in my head on the topic, but then I just closed the tab to comment. I know that I need to just get over it and start writing, but I am having a hard time.

I have also read some contradictory tips about what to write on Twitter. The tips mainly centered on not writing about what you are doing, i.e. I just finished eating dinner. I also found out ny lurking on Twitter that a lot of teachers post links to helpful articles or tech tips. I did that for a while, but I recently stopped because I found that I was researching earticles to post to Twitter and that it took away time from other things and that using Twitter usually doesn't require research. Also by lurked, I have found that some/most of the people I follow do include updates on what they currently are doing. I have been considering posting on that as well, but again the intimidation creeps in and I think that what I am doing is really insignificant to the others that I follow.

The other cause of anxiety/intimidation when I write online for my PLN is that I don't believe that I will contribute enough to the conversation. In order for these other educators to want to include me in their PLN's requires me to contribute thoughful, meaningful contributions to the discussion at hand, and I don't think that I have enough knowledge to do that.

I guess that in order to get over all of these fears, I just have to go out and start doing, whether it is tweeting or commenting.