cc licensed flickr photo shared by mikebaird
Coming back after taking a few days off from blogging and tweeting (for the most part), I came back to catch up on my google reader blogs (subscribing and reading others work is something that I consider essential to growing in your own educational practice…here are some great educator blogs that you can subscribe to) and found a new post from Edudemic. It was discussing a new “social network just for educators“, that was similar to facebook and twitter, but for those who are passionate about learning.
Since it is summer and I see this as a time to really explore and play, I decided to join the network and see what it was like. I remember when I first started Twitter and did not know ANYBODY other than a few people and it was really hard to get started. Starting it was tough and since I believe that relationships and connecting are huge in education, I did not really get into it. Now though, having connected with several others, many joined quickly and started playing on the site along with me and talking about it:
(These are all great people to follow on Twitter by the way!)
Now many of you are thinking, “here is ANOTHER site that I am going to sign up to”, and I agree with you that we sometimes have to narrow the tools that we use for our own Personal Learning Environments. So when we sign up for these sites, I really want to know what is the harm? One of the things that I want to focus on as an educator is creating a positive digital footprint, so I always take in account the sites that I sign up for. That is one consideration. Knowing that this is an educator site from a good source, I am not worried about it as much as I would signing up for a bunch of credit cards! (Should I be though?) I have always had the thought that if the site does not appeal to me, I will simply stop using it. As educators, we can only spread our wings so far (hence the trouble that I am having with my LinkedIn account which does not seemingly improve my learning like other sites).
So signing up for these sites and playing with them, what do you think could be the potential positives or negatives? I am kind of excited about joining something that is so new to be honest, but it is always with trepidation if others are not able to vouch for it.
I would love to hear from you.
