Thing #23

Wow, I had no idea all these social networking sites were out there. There is just so much available that you hardly know where to start. I do like knowing that these sites that are geared more specifically towards educational professionals are there for us to explore. I think that will be much more valuable to me in my profession than facebook, though I like that one for my personal life. In browsing through all the various sites, it was interesting to me to see all the various educators reaching out to other educators to collaborate with them on various things. I noticed that most of the ones I saw seemed to be teachers of middle or high schoolers, but there were a couple of 5th/6th grade teachers, too. I am still having a hard time finding much for us who teach the lower grades k-4. Maybe because incorporating this type of online collaboration for younger students is more a strain on the teacher's time throughout the whole process, whereas teachers of older students can kind of get everything set up and then eventually just facilitate the students' use of the sites. For the youngest students, I think it is going to be more labor and time intensive on the teacher.

Still, all the knowledge out there from other teachers around the world can be very helpful to me as I stumble through this world of technology and try to incorporate it little by little into my classroom.