To Tweet or not to Tweet

I am not a fan.  While I can see that some teachers find Tweeting as a way to gain support from other teachers, I feel that I need more than 140 characters from someone in a different country.  I hate Facebook because it seems that everyone feels the need to post the most mundane details of their lives and Twitter seems to me to be just as meaningless.  I have joined and will follow my two people and, who knows, I may be surprised.  I will try to keep an open mind.

Technology and Learning

November's article is an insightful discussion of the importance of balancing responsibility and learning in the digital arena. I think his point that social and ethical responsibility must be taught by exposing children to these social tools rather than blocking them is valid.  Many schools already address bullying so adding cyberbullying and other misuses of technology seems like a logical step.
His point that students too often accept information from the web without thinking critically about these sources is so true.  As teachers, we need to teach our students how to find accurate information online and to evaluate its reliability.  I try to do this by directing them to several trustworthy sites and then have them search on their own for other sites and then to compare them.
The most important point November makes is the need to teach our students to think globally and to be aware and empathize with the plights of people around the world.  I hope to continue to work on this with my students by various projects like having them research the use and availability of natural resources in other parts of the world.
This project fits well with Warlick's ideas on the importance of student-centered learning in that I let them pick the resource and the country that they want to learn more about.

Diigo vs. del.icio.us

Besides the fact that Diigo is just so much easier to type than del.icio.us :)  I thought Diigo was clearer and easier to follow the instructions.  I also liked the highlighting feature and the sticky notes.  I think I would have used this a lot when doing research for various papers I have written - if I had known it existed!  For school use, I can see either of them being valuable as a research tool to aid students.  The teacher could provide a few bookmarks that the class could access to get started researching and then they could add to and share the list with fellow students.

I don't really see much difference in BuddyMarks other than it was a little easier to attach to my browser toolbar.

Using del.icio.us (or Diigo) seems like a great way to be able to access your bookmarks where ever you are and to take advantage of the knowledge of others through networking with people with similar interests.

Blogging

Reading and commenting on other's blogs is very time consuming.  I think I would definitely be more likely to read and respond to one class blog as we do to the wiki.  That way there could be a general theme with each person adding her comments to it.

Blogs and wikis

http://www.wiki-teacher.com/index.php  This wiki offers great professional resources and then discussion of them by those who have tried them.  I can see me using this as a way to increase my knowledge of any subject area but especially in reading.  I would say that this wiki uses some of the features of a blog in that teachers can make comments that others cannot edit.  But  it differs from a RSS feed in that I can choose the comments and resources I want to access.

Wikis I may use

I found the wiki http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com/ which looks like it will provide me with a lot of info on how to use wikis in the classroom.  It includes links to other education related wikis like teacher peer and student  created. Another wiki that looks promising is http://literacymalden.wikispaces.com/ which focuses on instructional stratagies for reading.