I'm an avatar!

For  quite awhile now, I have wanted to move up to the middle school or high school level from elementary. One of my reasons is that I am and always have been a “media” person. I love teaching media literacy and Power Point and always wanted to teach kids video production but have never had the means or the time to do it. After taking this class, I want to move up even more since these sites having to do with social networking are much more doable at the higher levels. Yes, I know it is possible to have blogs, wikis, etc at the elementary level, just like it’s possible to teach video production, but it is just easier with more mature kids.  This week, I enjoyed learning about Flickr and as someone else mentioned, it’s fun. I’ll enjoy periodically checking out my groups and I plan to add some pictures of my school library and the local public library. (we have a really neat sculpture) Interesting what I learned about MySpace. It seems that now it’s not as cool as it once was since 40% of its users are old like me and just the fact that libraries have a presence on MySpace now makes it not as edgy. I understand that high school and university libraries decided that this would be a good way to reach their patrons, but in the process have they actually turned them away?  Wouldn’t this be kinda like a teenage girl thinking an outfit is really great until she sees her mother wearing it?  Anyway, if I move up to the high school level, I would look into MySpace as a way to reach the students but there is no way I can at the elementary. 

I had heard little about MMOG’s, and really was not interested in them. The first computer game I played was Pong.  And then I became an expert at Centipede. So these games were beyond me and I really didn’t expect to have anything to do with them until I saw a paragraph from my ISTE listserv:

Join ISTE members and other educators for weekly networking events in Second Life. Activities such as educator socials, bi-monthly speaker series, show and tell opportunities, and drop-in hours give ISTE members a chance to learn more about this emerging technology and interact with peers from around the world. To learn more, visit the ISTE Second Life Web page or e-mail General Membership Program Director Jennifer Ragan-Fore at jraganfore@iste.org.

Well, that convinced me. I respect this organization and have  already joined Second Life, even though I haven’t had a chance to play, but I will. Thanks!