Thing #5

I have been an sporadic user of Facebook for a while now. I really got into it last fall when I used it as a tool to find people whose Christmas cards were returned because they had moved. I was able to find two old friends through their children who were on Facebook. That was kind of cool. I also caught up with some of my old students from years ago. In fact, I have been emailing with one of them fairly regularly which has been great. I must admit I am not a huge fan of the layout of Facebook and I don't know as much as I might, but I know enough to have it work for me. There are a number of people at work who farm on Facebook. I have ne idea what that is and think I better not look to find out. I don't want to get hooked on it just yet!

As for Twitter... I have tried on several different ocassions to use Twitter. I think it doesn't really work for me because I have to use it on my laptop. Therefore, the short tweets aren't as compeling as I'm not trying to kill time on the 3G network while I'm cooking dinner, doing laundry or waiting for an airplane. Also, I have been challenged to find people I'm interested in tweeting. I am following a terrific technology educator and I don't even find his tweets worthwhile. So, I am still in the developing stage.

As for use in the classroom, I love the whole notion of social networking. I have found that some young people don't like the idea of teachers/parents invading their world. And, since I'm not particularly fond of the layout of Facebook, I am just more inclined to us ning, edmodo, etc. I'm still working on reasons to use Twitter over some other tools.

I really like the whole backchannel concept. I think the blog post about it was good. I have seen it used a couple of times and plan to encourage teachers to use in their classrooms. I think it could be successful if used during video conferencing, guest speakers, and even during some class presentations - by fellow teachers and students.