Welcome

Here I am--a "late adopter" of blogging. I need to "get with the 90s," so here I am. I have learned a lot from reading blogs myself, so I thought it was more than past time that I have one (now that I hear they may be going out of style.)

To start off, I'd like to send out a plea for you to send me ideas of ways teachers can use new media, particularly emphasizing social networking in classrooms. I've been asked to write a new book by Corwin Press. It will come out in 2009, which means I need to write it in 2008! This will coincide with my sabbatical, which is a good thing. But it won't be a good thing if I don't have classrooms to visit and to write about.

I need your help in finding teachers who are using some type of social networking in their classrooms. Of course, teachers are very hesitant now to even have Facebook or MySpace pages themselves. And yet the whole world seems to be on Facebook and MySpace. How can teachers use these tools in their classrooms? And not only social networking sites, but such other forms of social networking such as sharing web sites, blogging, taking part in user rating systems (on Amazon and IMDB, for example), Twitter, and YouTube, just to name a few. Are any of you out there using any forms of new media to help your students connect to each other and the world?Please let me know, either by responding to this post or sending me an email at wkist@kent.edu

Or please just respond to this post and let me know what you think of this site or just what's new with you!