535 Week 5- Facebook, Ning, and Google Sites

I'll try to avoid repeating anything I've already said in previous posts or in my Eyejot video, but I make no guarantees. I liked reading about friendship-based and interest-based networks. I obviously have my Facebook account to keep in touch with my friends, but it made me think of a few years back when I started following a Sabermetric-heavy baseball blog. I had no interest at all in math, being a Language Arts teacher, but the fact that math was used in relation to something I already like really piqued my interest. I ended up coming around to the idea of advanced stats, and it's been easier for me to see how measurements and formative assessments could really be useful in the classroom. Getting kids out there into the online world increases the chances that they can find something of interest that can relate to the goals of the unit.

The addition of Facebook and Ning was almost a little overwhelming for me. Between blogs, wikis, Twitter, and making class websites, it seems like the ways to get information from one person to the other is never-ending. But, I suppose that's a good thing. We don't know which of these technologies will survive, which will mutate, and which will die on the vine. Letting students get comfortable with a number of different technologies helps assure that when the next big thing comes out, they'll be better prepared for it. Plus, if students know 50 different ways to send information, they can choose the best one to complete a given task. And weighing the benefits of different forms of communication, then deciding based on audience and purpose is critical thinking- just a little added bonus that wasn't even part of the lesson.