Social Networking: Reactions, Experiences and Expectations

I have a few different initial reactions that have taken place since joining these social networks for this course. My first reaction was that I was happy to know how to use two of the social networks pretty well (Facebook and Twitter).  On the other hand though, I’ve never heard of Diigo and I’ve written a few blog posts before but haven’t ever really dived fully into a blog. I’m also really interested to see how we incorporate each of them throughout this course and to gain ideas for inside the classroom.

As far as experience in using social media for my own professional development, I really lack in that area. That is one reason I really chose to take this course.  I do follow a few teacher twitter accounts on my personal twitter that I read posts from and gather some ideas from, but that’s about it on my end. I know this is an area that I could definitely improve on and I’m hoping this course will help me with that.

I therefore also have no experience using social media as an instructional strategy as of now, but would love to incorporate it in the future for sure. Our school has multiple social media accounts for the students and teachers to follow, but I haven’t used any of them individually for my own classroom. I think it’s a great strategy to pull in the students’ interests and could then help the learning environment tremendously so I’m excited to learn ways to do so.

Overall, I would have to say that my expectations for this course are to take away multiple uses for my actual classroom. I would also love to become more comfortable with a variety of social networks so it would make the transition of using it in the classroom more successful for the students.