Earlier this afternoon, I was busily scrolling through my tweetdeck when I came across a tweet from Kim Cofino saying:

I found the link to the list of nominees, and proceeded to check them out. I love lists like this, as I always find some fabulous new people/blogs to follow.

Imagine my surprise to find that some very kind people had nominated Tip of the Iceberg for an award! I nearly fell off my chair!

I sent off a tweet to say:

@Edublogs (a.k.a Sue Waters) tweeted back right away, and let me in on who nominated me. I can’t thank Sylvia & Darcie enough for the gesture! You guys totally made my day!

Sue also made a super suggestion that I should set up an alert for Tip of the Iceberg, so that if anyone blogs about it, I get notified via Google Reader. I took Sue’s advice, and set up some alerts, so I won’t miss out on exciting stuff like this again!

Here’s the link Sue kindly passed on, which will give you all you need to know to set up alerts for your own blog.

Happy Blogging!

Online I’m a blogger. I have several blogs, documenting my work with students and my learning in technology education. I read other people’s blogs, comment on them and learn from them on a daily basis.

Online I’m a tweeter. Through Twitter, I have met a huge number of creative, talented, intelligent and inspiring people. I enjoy sharing information, ideas and random thoughts with many of them. I have certainly made new friends through Twitter.

Online I have followers. Although this fact never ceases to amaze me, there are people out there who read my blog and have me in their Google Reader! I can’t imagine a greater compliment than that!

Online people know me for my work. They know what I’m doing in my classroom, which tools I think are great, the highlights and challenges of teaching IT.

Online I help people find answers. I like being able to support newcomers to the online world I live in. I like being able to make a difference to people and help find solutions to their problems.

I have a very supportive group of family and friends, yet they seldom (if ever) read my blog posts. It appears am not alone in this: I put out the following tweet: Do your friends/family read your blog? Here are some responses:

That said, it’s important to get a balanced perspective on the issue. @nadinedickinson pointed out that her blog isn’t relevant to her friends/family, but it is for her coworkers.

If I take my particular situation, I am living overseas, and the vast majority of my friends are also teachers. Both of my parents are teachers. My sister is married to a teacher. I’m surrounded! My blog is particularly relevant to them as a group.

The intention of this post was not to moan about the number of friends/family members reading my blog, but rather highlight the fact that my friends/family have little idea about the extent of my online existence.

It makes me wonder what I don’t know about their lives.

Photo credit: The Flooz

Some days I can’t help feeling like I’m just piggybacking. My best ideas with ICT have been borrowed from other people’s best ideas, and I’m merely reproducing them in a slightly different way. I don’t feel much like an innovator, especially not when compared with many of the well-known edubloggers out there. My links today were somebody else’s links yesterday. Sometimes I feel I’m a couple of steps behind.

One day I foolishly decided to try out this site which shows you who is following you on Twitter, and whether or not the people you follow are following you. If I ever wanted a slap to the ego, this was it! (Resist the temptation to do it yourself!) I felt a little deflated, like some of my ICT heroes didn’t even know I existed! But realistically, why would they? This blog is merely a couple of months old, I am just realising the power of tools such as Twitter, and have only been teaching ICT since September. In addition to that, I haven’t commented on enough blogs to make a blip on the surface yet (hey, I’m working on it!).

Just before I decided to send the invitations out to my pity-party, I thought, you know what? There are days when I get people coming up to me saying, “Where do you find all this great stuff?” and (even more surprisingly), “I’m learning so much from you,” and I realise it’s all relative. I have introduced people to some new tools this year, and for that I feel like I’ve made a difference, albeit on a smaller scale to some of the greats.

Whilst I am piggybacking on other people’s ideas, amazingly, some people are piggybacking on mine.