ISTE

The International Society for Technology in Education is one blog site that I chose to examine mainly because of the title. I think I was drawn to it because I am a foreign language educator and anything with the word international seems to stick out. However, while I was reading through some of the posts, I noticed how it was a good sharing resource of ideas for the use of technology in the classroom. Some things that I found particularly interesting was the blog postings on the use of social media for educational purposes. I was surprised to find in the blog post: "Using Social Media", that there are in fact many educational groups that use twitter or LinkedIn to discuss opinions of education and helpful resources that can be used in the classroom. I also liked that it is something that will be appealing to students who already use the social media in their everyday lives.

The blog entitled "Snow Day on Twitter" also showed the effectiveness of using this social media for educational purposes. The girl that was described in the blog post was able to use Facebook to connect with other students in the class and created a note, similar to a Google document, where numerous students were able to add information. Because it is such a widely used resource, students were able to make it relevant to their educational experience as well. I think this shows the capability of using these resources in the classroom instead of eliminating them from the educational environment altogether.