Tribes, a concept that stems from people gathering with groups of people that share their interests, people that they are drawn to, their tribe. I never thought of myself as being part of a tribe… However I started to list who my tribes might be: my family, the Jule Vera gang, people who knit, people who scrapbook, people who like to do things outdoors, people who like to travel, people who love to learn, people who are interested in online education, people who love music, people who teach music. And I bet I could list more if I thought on it a bit!

Tribes are an interesting concept, one I think we likely take for granted without actually putting a name to it in most cases. I think you can latch onto the concept if you ponder on it a minute. There’s the obvious ones like your family, but I get a bit stuck on finding and interacting on my “might be” tribes, there’s hardly enough time in the day as it is. I think we tend to pick who/what might be most important from both a professional and personal standpoint and they become our focus, intended or not.

Professional tribes in my world would center around education; eLearning, online education, and music. With the advent of the Web 2.0 the thought of sharing information via the concept of building a personal learning network to share information and concepts with people you would likely never meet otherwise has great potential and power. The ability to tap into teaching ideas for specific concepts, especially complex ones, is a powerful tool! With my PLN, a work in progress, I hope to see discussions and helpful hints with regard to teaching music theory shared by the “private music theory teacher’s tribe”. I look forward to seeing ideas and thoughts from others, but in all honesty it’s still a challenge to think of people I connect with as tribes, and the project of connecting with them to entice the interaction still looms in the future!

March 15, 2018