I live in a rural area…no cell phone service so iPhone is not an option. No high speed Internet at my house although it is available within 20 km in either direction. I work from home, so my connections are both professional and personal.

Email and Yahoo Messenger are my main sources of contact. I use Elluminate Live! a lot both as a moderator and participating in online professional development. I love Skype, including video with family.

I connect with other people who share my interest in photography via Flickr and websites such as Digital Photography School.

Receiving the NY Times in my inbox every day keeps me in touch with what is going on in the world, and I share bits and pieces with others I think might be interested.

A couple of months ago I created a Facebook account, but I really don’t know what to do with it. I have never used Twitter or many of the other fashionable tools (I used to be on the leading edge of technology and now feel hopelessly left behind).

Best of luck with your project.

I connect via different communication channels, but it is not so much the channels that matter, but the people who use them, and the learning opportunities they create while doing so [otherwise you probably wouldn’t see me on twitter – as at the beginning I was quite cynical about it. It seemed so silly, yet, it is probably one of the communication platforms I use more often these days. 😉
But I still like blogging (although I am not blogging as often as I should. It helps me think and connect to others through my and their thoughts (does this make sense…? I see learning as a process based on shared understanding…)

Ok, so we have twitter,blogging (probably my first real webpresence, after the development of a boring website using frontpage, which I had no idea if people were visiting or not – so the connection was not really visible)…what else?

Ah… skype – it gets me so connected! It’s a brilliant too! 🙂

Then there is the google kit. (g)email is still very important to keep connection – both professionally and socially. I am still not sure where googlewave will take us, but mailing groups still work for me! 🙂

those are the ones I use on a regualr baisis.

Then there is also others such as Facebook (am there because my most of my network is too, and you don’t want to miss out on the conversation. I like ning a lot too.

Basically everything that bridges the connection works for me, as long as it is not very time-consuming. For instance, Second Life still hasn’t worked for me… still too demanding…

I hope this makes sense. I decided to write at the rhythm of my reflections…and they were flowing fast. 😉

Good luck with your project!

I connect by putting myself out there, in as uncensored way as I feel I can. Showing people not just the intellectual/work side of myself, which has always been easy for me to do and played to my strengths, but increasingly how working through personal things influences my thinking and work.

I connect by trying to acknowledge when people are doing the same. By trying to validate, comfort, question, listen.

I connect by examining my reactions to things I come across and figuring out what I really think and feel about them before reacting, and try to own my reactions (and not read too much into others).

I connect by becoming more mindful of the assumptions I am making about others, assumptions that can be exacerbated (but at other times lessened) by te interactions happening mostly in a virtual space.

Not sure this is what you are looking for. But it’s what your question brought up for me. Cheers, Scott