Outed as a "lurker"

In my reading over the past few hours I have come across the term "lurking" a couple of times. It seems that for the past few weeks, that is exactly what I have been doing - lurking in the background, reading blogs, setting up feeds and joining Classroom 2.0 (without actually contributing much yet). Despite the creepiness of the term, this lurking has been very educational and is working out to be a great exercise in professional development.


I have just been looking at Kim Cofino's 21st Century Educator wikispace (where I came across the term lurking for the second time within an hour or so - it was then I felt like I was being watched). Anyway, the slide presentation seemed to be the exact path that I am finding myself on. Sampling (I now have way too many feeds in google reader), making connections, joining groups and even contributing - though I'm still working on this one. The collaboration that goes on out here is fantastic and more valuable than most, if not all, the conventional type of professional development that I have done in recent years. I would recommend "learning by lurking" to anyone else out there. Find blogs and wikis to read and learn from and you will gradually work out what it is all about. Eventually you will be ready to move even further along that path into the Web2.0 world.