Tuesday 21 August 2012

Listen to Me!!!!

Perhaps the four exclamation marks in the title will help. If I shout long enough and loud enough, someone will hear me. The web is full of swimmers, diving for pearls, looking for a place to land briefly, to read something which can be shared. The web is also riddled with opinionated egomaniacs. Especially comical are the graying and wrinkled pensionados, who believe they have nothing but interesting things to say. Surrounded by fellow graying loudmouths, they scribble away about the importance of connectvity, about how the Web changed the world. It certainly changed their world. Instead of having to listen to the yapping of his also graying  wife, the connected graybeard climbs the steps to his little home office and starts yapping  away himself. He fills a quick blog post about his latest digital purchase. This simply has to be shared, his experiences and insights might benefit thousands of followers. And attract new followers! He scans his Network and retweets similar insights. About the importance if being connected. Collaboration via the web. The upcoming webinar in which he will speak. The benefits of online conferencing - although he sure as hell misses the hotelbars and the cute little conference hostesses. No such things online. When his wife calls him down for coffee he counts the amount of re-retweets. Still only two. The lack of interest  leaves him with an open aching space where his stomach used to be. His pale bony fingers tap away on his iPhone: "Internet Ceases to be Efficient." His wife asks him something, but he is oblivious. Copies a quote from a fellow Internet Guru and comments on it, tweets it. The first reply shows up after 1 minute. Without reading it, he leans back, happily thinking about the 35.000 ego-yaps that he tweeted into digital space in the past years. A monumental  achievement. When he has his supper, he sees that 37 followers retweeted his latest ego yap. He is satisfied. Another useful day.

2 comments:

  1. I really missed your blog and i like to listen to you more often ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm more active on my page techology in the classroom (www.facebook.com/technologyclassroom, but try to post regularly here as well.

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21st Century Learning

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Teacher, trainer, Head of IT, mum of three online teens, into social networks, open educational resources and visual learning. Head in the Global Cloud and feet in the Dutch clay.