ePal!

After viewing the ePals website, I can think of many ways I would use this site in my classroom. Many school districts have a problem with allowing teachers and students access social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, and even site like YouTube. While I understand the dangers that the administration sees in allowing access to these sites, I think there is a huge disadvantage as well. With a site like ePal, teachers would be able to do many of the things they want to do but can't.

For example, the ePal Learning Space is, "a virtual workspace optimized for creating, sharing, managing, and collaborating on educational content". This portion of the website allows teachers to safely email students, set up blogs, wikis, and other media tools while being able to monitor the content their students are subjected to. In addition, teachers can upload files (i.e. Word or PDF's) so that they will never hear the excuse of "I lost the original copy of my assignment so I couldn't do it," and also the most famous, "I didn't know that was due." Parents can also utilize this learning space by joining different communities or just checking to see what their children are doing in a specific class. With many built in language and content filters, the ePal Learning Space provides a safe environment for students to collaborate with their peers and teachers.

I can definitely see myself using the Learning Space to keep in contact with parents, to create wikis for my students, and also to set up blogs. With wikis and blogs, I could give my kids extra out of class help or step by step directions for assignments they are having problems with. The good thing about this program is everything is structured and the school district has the option to monitor the collaboration between students, teachers, and parents. I would definitely use this program in the classroom.

Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

With new technology coming out faster than you can blink, there are several opportunities for educators to not only use these resources for their own professional development but also for teaching. With social networks such as Facebook, Plurk, and Twitter, there has been s surge of information shared between educators about various topics. I believe that a social network such as Twitter can in fact help enhance the teaching experience. For example, Richard Byrne, a fellow blogger from Free Tech 4 Teachers, suggested  that with a social network like Twitter, teachers essentially, never have to spend another lunch alone, as it happens across many different schools. Because resources like Twitter exist, teachers no longer have to stay confined to a lonely classroom at lunch but instead, can create their own   Personal Learning Network that will enable them to connect to teachers not just in their building, but around the country and perhaps even around the world. A tool like this is essential I believe because it will help teachers share ideas about lessons (what worked and what didn't work), share their frustrations in the classroom, and even obtain feedback about ideas they have for the classroom. The Langwitches blog, also contains a short presentation about how and why teachers can use Twitter for their professional development and how they can get started using Twitter.

 In addition to using something like Twitter for professional development, a teacher can use it as a teaching tool in the classroom. For example, when reading Romeo and Juliet, students could make Twitter accounts for two or more characters and dialogue a conversation as it pertains to the play in order to switch the language into modern day English. Another activity? Using Twitter during lectures so that students who are less likely to speak out in class for have that platform where they too can ask questions. These are just two ideas and there are several other ways to make these social networks learning friendly. If the technology exists and students know the technology, why can't it be adapted into a lesson?