Chpt 6 The Social Web

This chapter really added to my thinking of how to utilize technology in the classroom.  Prior to this chapter, the text presented a variety of ideas to incorporate tools like blogs, wikis, RSS, twitter, and social bookmarking for the students to use to help facilitate learning.  However, this chapter presented ideas just for me to use as a teacher.  I can link with other teachers and brainstorm ideas for lessons and activities.  Also, if I'm having trouble helping my students understand a particular concept, for example, counting money, I can reach out to my Internet network of educators and ask for their ideas.  They can provide me with lesson plans they use, tools, or helpful hints and techniques they use with their students.  If I have a class full of kinesthetic learners, another teacher may post a link on her Delicious account to a great hands on activity she found online.  Or, I can search for tags like "money" "lesson_plan" and "activity" and scan through the archives of activities that other teachers have saved and found useful.  As a new teacher, I'm sure I'll have many questions and will only begin to build my activity repertoire.  It is very comforting to know that I will have resources in social bookmarking to turn to when I have run out of ideas. 
I'm not sure I'm completely sold on the idea of using Twitter or educational purposes yet.  The text claims it can be a powerful tool for porfessional development and communication.  I just can't imagine that enough teachers are using it for educational purposes for it to be useful for me.  In order for Twitter to be useful, teachers must have the time to devot to tweeting ideas and activities used in their classroom.  I have been helping in classrooms for a few years now and I already know that time is very precious to teachers.  It is much easier to ask a coworker in the break room about a stuggle then to search the "twitterverse" for answers.  Even if Twitter is just used to inspire ideas from other educators, I think the greatest ideas are probably left un-tweeted.  The best teaching techniques require time, research, and preperation.  That doesn't leave a lot of time to tweet about the teacher's success.  I know, personally, I would not tweet about my classroom strategies or lessons.  Not that I wouldn't be willing to share them, I just don't have the time to log them daily.