Tool 2: Building Community & Comments

I must re-state what Mr. Richardson spoke on in his YouTube video. Safety and ethics must be taught before releasing our students onto the Internet to participate in PLN's. But, once those two very important standards are introduced, the sky is the limit. Online communities and PLN's are not going away and most likely will impact more of our classroom time in the future than not. As we move forward with incorporating technology in the classroom, the Internet won't be far behind and will be come a standard format to teaching and possibly assessing.

The point that educators may be behind when participating and creating these online communities and PLN's stood out to me the most. Mr. Richardson stated that our students are already doing these things, so why resist the inclusion of them in our classrooms and curriculum? Again, the Internet has impacted just about every facet of life, education has to utilize these tools in order to educate our student users. Others wise, will lose their interest with archaic formats.

When I began my 11 tools journey, many of my fellow educators had not begun their blogs, so choosing ones to follow were few. I have since begin to follow Kimmy's 11 Tools , Life Long Learning , Live Laugh & Learn, Shopping Teacher, and Teaching and Technology. Three are from my WWe campus and two are other SBISD campuses. Check out their blogs to see my comments.