Social networks are plain and simple to me as places you can meet people to stay connected. A few of the popular sites that I have had contact with before this class and even before this chapter were MySpace and Facebook. I use those sites for ways to connect with extended family and friends from high school and junior college. I opened a MySpace account because it is easily customizable to show your character. Another reason I opened a MySpace because at the time Facebook was still a eligible college networking site where you needed a valid school email address to join. I only learned about another networking site before, Twitter, with everyone talking about tweets and Facebook making adaptions to their original format to mirror Twitter. Ning is still a site that is rather new to me. Ning is basically as customizable as a blank website where a teacher can develop it with posting personal profiles, photos, video links, groups, discussions, and blogs.
Before reading this chapter, I never really thought of any of these social networking sites being a tool I would use in my classroom, much less not knowing all of these (Ning) existed. I could see using Facebook as a way to connect with fellow teachers in my school, in my state, in my content area, and stay connected with the people who went through the education program with me in college. I guess because of hearing all the professional athletes using Twitter to make a joke of themselves I just found Twitter a public way to create a story. I never really put thought into using Facebook/Twitter as a way to give students links on related content to class or even forwarding classroom/school news to parents and teachers alike.
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