“That’s so…asinine, naive, etc. (but not gay)”
I definitely think that there is a place for social networking in a classroom setting. I do however feel that it needs to be closely monitored with specific rules put in place. I personally don’t think I would “befriend” any of my students on Facebook, or have them follow me on Twitter, unless I set up separate accounts solely for that purpose. Of course I feel that I would handle myself professionally at all times, but with today’s children and parents, I would rather err on the side of caution. I might however set up a Skype account so that I could have “virtual office hours” if my students needed a little extra help after class, but even that would require some research and rules.
One thing that I worry about with technology in the school setting, is taking it too far as seen with the student from Pennsylvania. I thought this was fitting seeing as we just read Little Brother
One of the first things I noticed and was drawn to about Ning is that there is a place to ask questions and advice of other teachers. The post that caught my attention was “That’s so gay” . I did a project on GLBT in the high school classroom last week, and it would have been great to have some teacher responses to add to my project. There was also a lot of questions among my peers about what we can and should say and do when confronted with situations regarding sexuality and gender, that no one knew the answers to. I found it helpful to see all the different mandates different schools have in place to help with this. I also found it neat that there were resources to help teachers teach some popular and not so popular books.
