Blog#6 Social Networking

Social networking can be an effective tool to professional development. We social network everyday; even if we do not realize we are creating a social network. It is a great way to communicate with teachers from everywhere, get first-hand tips and share your ideas to enhance the learning experience in today's classroom. Social networking started when I was in 6th grade starting with “AIM.” In my opinion, and i am sure the opinion of my peers, as young kids, the more friends we had the “cooler” we were. I would go around school asking people what their screen names were and I would go on for the majority of time after school until I went to bed. The downfall of this tool became apparent when people were able to create false identities. I remember when I was in 8th grade, someone created a screen name pretending to be me. They were talking to numerous amounts of people pretending to be me, when it wasn’t me at all. It was scary and definitely a learning experience.

Face book, twitter, and Wikispaces are three tools I not only would use but do use for social networking.


Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) is a social network I use more than 5 times a day. it is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. we can add friends, send anyone messages, update our personal information (I am very cautious about what I write because I know anyone can view it) Along with these availabilities, we can create invitations and exclusively send them to whomever we desire, and best of all, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, and school or college. The website is used as such a powerful social network that there are over 400 million current users worldwide.











Twitter (http://twitter.com/) I used to have a twitter last year. It became too overwhelming for me so I deleted mine. I guess since we have to become a user for class purposes, I will use it to its fullest advantage. Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send and read messages. AKA tweets. They are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on a users profile page. They are then delivered to the authors subscribers who are known as followers. We are allowed to restrict delivery to whomever we choose. It seems to be an easy way for others to “stalk” other people, when if you look deeper into it, it does connect people to others and allows for good social networking. I learned that a lot of educators use Twitter to connect and meet each other.








Wikispaces (wikispaces.com) is a hosting service that is made easy for everyone; not just technical users. It is a place where you can create a wiki, and mainly focuses on community collaboration. It is offered and available exclusively for k-12 educational use. It is available worldwide for teachers, students, and educators. We can input projects, add links, and personalize it any way we want.

Blog #5- Why I chose Egypt for my Lesson Plan (Extra Credit)

There is relevance as to why I chose to create a lesson plan using Egypt. Egypt is a place where I have had personal experiences and past history. I have visited Egypt twice in my life. My ancestors on my father’s side of the family were from Egypt. I am the second generation to live in America, although my father was born in Egypt. My grandparents were eighteen when they came to America. During this time, the Czechoslovakian war broke out. Since my family is Jewish, we were being targeted. Since my Grandfather had a visa to the United States (for attending University of Pennsylvania) my grandparents were able to leave Egypt in hope for a safer life. My other family members who lived in Egypt were forced to separate from my grandparents. Egypt was my grandparent’s childhood. Living in Alexandria had its benefits, because they take pride in where they lived and they tell us stories about Egypt and what it means to them. When we visit, they show us all the important architecture and history, so I have learned a lot over the years, and that is why I want to share what I know to all of my students.