Is Your PLN Making You Lazy?

So I've noticed something recently. People in my Twitter personal learning network are beginning to misuse it and I don't think they're aware of it.

"Who are you to say how Twitter should be used for educational networking?!?" you ask?

Nobody. I only just hit a thousand followers and four thousand tweets a week ago after six years on Twitter and am making a career out of hanging around brilliant people until they think I'm one of them.

Thanks, http://twopcharts.com/howlongontwitter!

But I am an expert communicator, and I think we're getting lazy.

What's happening is that people - educators - are starting to ask searchable questions. Now from the asker's perspective, this may seem petty: "It's more fun to ask questions of a live person!" Fine. Have fun. But what do you tell a student when they ask a searchable question? "Google it." What do you reply in emails to colleagues? How many of you have used http://lmgtfy.com/ to respond to a question? (If you haven't, you should try it out.)

We should hold ourselves to the same standard we hold our students and not burden our busy PLN colleagues until after we've searched.

Thinking in terms of Bloom's Taxonomy, I want to have Twitter discussions around higher level questions that challenge me to apply, analyze, evaluate and create. I want to be able to reply with more questions and to attack problems collaboratively. I don't want to Google it for you.

So while it may sound petty, I'm asking you to respect your PLN. Ask the next question, not the searchable one.

Now excuse me while I go tweet what I had for lunch. @Seanjay if you're interested.