Social Networking and Social Bookmarking

            This week’s lessons on social bookmarking and social networking were very exciting for me.  I currently have a Facebook page and previously had a MySpace page so I am familiar with social networking.  Until this class I really had no interest in setting up a Twitter account.  It just seemed like too much for what I used my social networks for, which is mostly to stay in touch with family and friends. However, there are so many ways to use networks for professional, educational, and personal use.

            There are several ways that I could see myself using Twitter or Facebook in my professional life. I coached high school swimming for the past 3 years.  Setting up a team Twitter account would have been an easy way to communicate with the athletes and parents. While I was coaching, parents would email me regularly asking questions about upcoming meets, practices, or other important information.  By setting up a team twitter account, I could direct parents, families, and athletes to follow the team on twitter. I could provide meet results, meet line-ups, and other important news to everyone, instantly!  It would also be great to have had one of my team’s managers post updates on Twitter while the team was competing. That way, parents and family members who were not able to attend the competition would be aware of what was happening.

            Additionally, I can see setting up a Twitter account for my classroom.  The account would need to be monitored regularly, and would be a private account, but could be used for a variety of purposes. I send home reminders, homework, newsletters, permission slips, and so on every day.  Using a Twitter account, I could share important information with parents. However, this would not work for every family since not everyone has access to the internet on a regular basis.  This would mean that I would still need to send paper copies of notes home with students, and it can get difficult to manage which students need paper copies and which don’t.

            Social bookmarking is a whole new world for me.  I have created bookmarks before, but they were stored on my computer not on the web. I am currently working on a research paper for another class, and since I have a Diigo account, I have been using it regularly. It has taken some time to get used to all of the features and gadgets that are available.  I look forward to exploring it in more detail.

            Diigo holds a lot of value in the education world. It can be used to collaborate on projects or research, or less formally to share things of interest.  In my current position as a kindergarten teacher I would like to set up a group with my fellow kindergarten teachers at school so that we are able to share websites with each other, without clogging our school email accounts.  Furthermore, I plan to set up a list specifically for educational websites for my students. Many times I find myself emailing websites (to myself) for use when my class goes to the computer lab.  It would be very beneficial to find a way to add my students to a group so that when we go to the computer lab, they can log-in to Diigo and all get to the same website independently.  Likewise, it would be an excellent resource to provide parents with educational websites for their children to use at home.  The possibilities are endless!