CEP 810 - Social Networking

Facebook is my only social network experience so far.  I started using Facebook about a year ago because my friends were bugging me to create an account so we could keep in touch.  Now that I have an account, I use it for personal networking with my family and extended family as well as with my friends on a daily basis.  I like to keep up with what is going on in their lives.  I have an iPod and have my Facebook account set up so that I get updates every time someone posts on my Facebook account.  I tend to look at other peoples news feeds a few times throughout the day, but rarely do I post anything on my page.  When I went on an anniversary trip to Hawaii, I posted pictures for my children to see almost daily.  It made me feel connected and felt more personal than just talking on the phone.  We could talk about the picture and what we were doing at the time.  I haven't really explored all of the features that Facebook has, but I do enjoy keeping up with family and friends on it.  I have not used a Social Networking site professionally.  I had not even heard of LinkedIn or Nings like MACUL or Classroom 2.0 until this session in 810.  I signed up for each of them today and can see that they could be very useful in most classrooms.  Looking at LinkedIn, I can see how it would be useful to have a social network that allows me to communicate about my career in education. 

I am not able to social networks with my own students because of the severity of their disabilities, but I would definitely use it with my peers.  I can see that I could share lesson plan ideas, post things to other teachers that I work with, or teachers in my field of special education across the country.  I am eager to use the resources in classroom 2.0 to find applications that are appropriate for my students or my field in special education.  I am excited to search for others that have similar classrooms as I have to see if there are good ideas that can be shared with teachers in my school.  I would love to learn enough about these tools so that I could introduce them to my colleagues at work.  I think that some of them would be really excited about using these social networks.  I can especially see this being used with my students parents to help them to get networked with other parents that have children with similar disabilities as their own children.  Overall, I am pleased with what I have learned about social networks and can't wait to explore then more in depth.