Facebook

I was invited to join Facebook to keep in touch with a young friend who relocated to the US. Since then I've linked to family members in the US and around Australia. The language used very much evidences the generation of the user. The youngsters (under 30s) use SMS speak and tend to embellish (I hope!!) their social & sexual drinking/drugging activities. The older generation are more comfortable with grammatic English, even when using the social links to search for social relationships. I feel like a pedant when I try to bridge ths generation gap to make contact with some young relatives. I haven't used Facebook for collegiate links, but was introduced to Twitter to follow professional development discussions re. literacy theories end English teaching.

MySpace thoughts

MySpace is an incredibly addictive social space with amazing potential to expand people's use of technology resources.
My main contact with Myspace is as a source of sleep-deprivation for mid-to-late-teen girls who are often unable to function capably in the school classroom. We've had issues with cyber-bullying via MySpace, also, and have to be pro-active in teaching face-to-face communication skills and responsibility for actions in utilising MySpace as a social contact tool.
Some barely verbal boys with poor social skills also seem to get hooked on MySpace without developing "real-world relationship" skills. (Links to virtual worlds such as Second Life don't seem to teach these students about connecting to the real world.) We do see some mental Health issues.
My main focus in the school environment is on developing literacy/numeracy and social skills and I mainly have to advise students to limit their time on MySpace and organise a weekly plan to allow for school work and activities away from the computer.

The use of MySpace to connect students to their libraries and community services is brilliant.
Drupal looks to be an amazing service provider; will take some time to investigate it.

rocmelis

rocmelis
Originally uploaded by Bloomsbury Stud

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

LibraryThing

Lots of uses for this one; most useful for me in researching young teen fiction for students with reading difficulties needing reading material of age appropriate content. Some reviews are useful. Will have to investigate Tags to find most direct access to 'educational' reviews.
I've linked to the LT blog; couldn't find a gadget or widget to add easily.

Time management

Off to hospital for an op. tomorrow. Am a bit behind with my Web 2 investigations but look forward to indulging in lots of research while I recuperate over the next few weeks.

Horse talk (2)

I used Comic Creator from ImageGenerator.org to add speech bubbles to my own photo.
Looks small on the screen so I enlarged it a little. Still too small to read the dialogue on the blog screen, but the photos clicks large and looks quite good.
Quite an easy tool to use.