Social Networking

Social networking has fit into my workflow personally for a number of years.  Five years ago, when my oldest son left for college, I saw Facebook as a way to keep in touch with him. It worked well for that, but I was also pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to reconnect with friends from high school and college, some of whom I had not been in touch with in over 30 years.  I also found that Facebook was a good way to communicate with people I currently work with or have worked with in the recent past. Even though they are “work friends,” the information shared is personal and therefore the social networking site has added a new dimension to these relationships.

Since enrolling in Teaching for Understanding with Technology, I’ve learned that social networks can make a major contribution to my Professional Learning Network (PLN). In addition to Facebook , I’m now also an active user of Twitter and MACUL Space and was able to set up links between the three accounts. I use hashtags on Twitter to enable me to follow specific topics, and even though MACUL Space is already a “specialty” social network, I’ve taken that a step further by becoming a member of the MSU EduTech and Multimedia (MM) special interest groups on the site. These sites are all contributing to a customized professional development plan for me.

My students frequently talk about using the Facebook and MySpace social networking sites. They use these sites mainly for communicating and sharing pictures with friends and family.  I plan to share with them how I’m using social networking to support my own personal learning goals and to collaborate with colleagues so they too can see the possibilities these sites extend to them for creating their very own personal learning networks.