I feel quite naïve admitting that despite daily using a social network (facebook) I had never thought of the idea of professional networks. It makes so much sense and is typical of Web 2.0. Scootle is an example of a teaching network. It has 8,165 digital curriculum items. It involves collaboration, sharing, communicating and various media (audio, visual, video). It looks easy enough to navigate through with the search bars allowing you to search by grade, topic or time. The ‘learning paths’ are typical of Web 2.0 as they are a sequence of lesson content and teacher comments. I had never used Scootle before and kept coming across needing a username and password which I don’ t have…..
While I use facebook and think it is a great way to keep up with your friends and family and share photos, I don’t think it has any place in the classroom. I also have a twitter account but rarely use it- mostly because most of the people I care about are on facebook and the people I “follow” on twitter are mainly celebrities. Most of the time I don’t care about their microblogs but occasionally they can have quite witty or humorous things to share. Again I don’t think twitter has an educational purpose.
Second life was something else I had never heard of and was quite amazed to see. It reminded me of a game version of “Avatar”. It is like stepping into a virtual world. I couldn’t see my Year 1 students using this program but for older students it would be a good way for them experiment with 3D modeling, design and sharing with other students. I could see the benefits of this sort of program for gifted students to extend them, but also see it as a concern- as a lot of recreational games for children these days are virtual (eg. Wii) so we definitely need a healthy balance between the virtual and real life social experiences.
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