Week 4 in Review

This was a busy week!  Now that I'm back in the country, I did took the advice to "disconnect" for a  few days.  It was really nice!  When I was out of the country and forced to disconnect because of Internet issues, it was really difficult.  However, it is a totally different experience when you make the choice to disconnect!

The topic of instructional design for social media is very important.  Sometimes, I feel like so many people (teachers, instructors, etc.) include social media because of the novelty.  Yes, it's cool.  It should also be meaningfully integrated.  I am thrilled that a chapter about "Social Media and Instructional Design" will be added to the Trends and Issues text.  Social media has a lot ot add to teaching and learning, so it will be nice for graduate students in our field to understand opportunities best practice.  

I explored many of the tools this week, including: Wikispaces, Edmodo (and Google Classroom), and Google Maps.  I love exploring the new tools each week to add to my "Technology Tool Box."

On Thursday, I am heading to Toronto with Vanessa for the annual Social Media and Society conference.  We are presenting about high school students' social media networks and context collapse (discussed earlier in the semester).  I plan to attend many of the other presentations, so hopefully I'll be able to report on some new Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning!