Taking a Side Trip!

After visiting some of the listed blogs from our book, I found them to be actually really useful. When I thought of education blogs, my first thought was that they were going to be really boring, and that I would not understand what they were talking about. One blog that really stood out to me was The Ford Log, in his blog, Peter talks about how he is running his blog for his classroom, how they got the blog up and running and how it is beneficial to be blogging in education. I think blogging with students is such a great idea, kid's have the ability to express how they feel outside of the classroom, they can chat with the teacher if they are too shy to do so in the classroom and they can get updates and reminders on what is going on in class or on campus.

Overall, I found these educational blogs to be very eye-opening, these blogs are allowing educators around the world to come together and connect through experiences, ideas and projects. No longer is a teacher stuck trying to figure out how she is going to work something into her lesson or how to approach a certain topic. Through blogging, teachers can now rely on other educators for advice and help.

Changes in Social Media

You may ask yourself, what os social media? Social media is news, information, ideas or opinions people share freely with friends or peers usually around your same age group; majority of the time they are posted on the internet through videos, pictures and websites like facebook, myspace, you-tube, etc. When we look back ten years ago to see if things like social media existed, the fact was that they didn't. They have only been around for the past five years or so. So what did people do to get the word out or spread news? Well they seemed to manage just fine, they had many options like calling on the phone, text messaging, emailing, writing letters, news through magazines, newspapers or local t.v. Well sadly to say, those options are still available today, but they are not used quite as much as new ways like social networking sites, websites and internet ads. The reality, is that things have evolved over time, we are now working smarter not harder. When I say this I mean that it is so much easier to type something up on a computer than it is to write a letter or making a long-winded phone call. Society today is geared toward convenience and instant gratification. People don't have the time to wait and do things, it is much easier to post things or ideas to a site like facebook and let people interact with you at their convenience.

Social media has also changed in education, technology has continued to grow in schools and you now have teachers using facebook to connect with the students in the classroom, teachers using blogs to post homework and kids creating email addresses so that they can be in contact with other students too. I think this is what education needs,kids nowadays need to have as much exposure to technology as possible, because in reality it is what our society is using in our day to day life and interactions with others.