Social Networking

       Well, before this class, my knowledge about social networking stopped at MySpace and Facebook.  Late in college I created a MySpace account and originally found it extrodinarily fun to see who I could find that I knew, talk with people I hadn't talked to since graduating high school, edit my profile page, embed scrolling picture slideshows of my weekendings, changing the song on my profile, you get the picture!  But after the "newness" wore off, I found myself accessing my MySpace less and less until I eventually deleated my profile becuase I wasn't interested anymore.  I swore that I would never surender to the Facebook junkies and create a Facebook account and I'm proud to say I...partially stuck to my guns...My wife and I share an account.  WHICH I LOVE!  She does all the work of updating our status, finding the "skinny" on people, and uploading new pictures and I get to reap some of those benifits without doing all that work!  But that is one of the downfalls to social networking: it takes such a long time to keep your account up to date.  Plus you can get sucked in to searching and clicking, that before you know it, 2 hours have gone by and you have seemingly done nothing besides catch up on peoples gossip.

Now...I have seen the benifits perfessionally to social networking when talking about MySpace and FaceBook.  I can't tell you how many music groups I have looked up and listened to on MySpace before purchasing it.  And Facebook, I have heard of numerous success stories becuase of their idea/company/product has spread through Facebook.  But besides those businesses, I failed to see how it could benifit me...as a teacher.

After going through the social networking lab, I now see that there is benifit in social networking even for me as an educator.  I'm still "wet behind the ears" so I don't have my bag of tricks all filled up yet and am constantly searching the "net" for something new, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel.  If I don't find something, I am forced to create something myself.  This is not entirely a bad thing, but I do see sites like MACUL, Classroom 2.0 Ning, and Educators PLN being useful in that context.  Everything on these sites is educational.  I can go to these sites and see best practices from real teachers by accessing their forums and blogs.  I could connect with teachers around Michigan or around the world.  Do I feel one of these sites will be my saving grace and have everything I need?  No, I will still have to search.  But this gives me an opportunity to ask other educators for ideas.

LinkedIn I can see being helpful if were looking for a job...but i'm not sure what else.

If I were to utilize these social networking sites daily, my students will probably benifit from these becuase I could be spending my time developing how I am going to make my lesson effective instead of worrying about creating it and getting it done.