Module 9 - Social Networking

With the rapid development of social networking sites in the 21st century, I found this module to be very interesting to explore the opportunities this medium can have in terms of education. Earlier this year I was shown Scootle by our Manager of E-Learning and valued its purpose in accessing shared resources for the 21st century classroom. Revisiting it I can see how beneficial it is to share resources between teachers and encourage students to develop skills in using technology for educational purposes. Unfortunately, the site seems to only cater to KLA's like English, Maths, Science, History, Arts (Drama/Visual Art) not vocational programs like Entertainment.  So when I conducted a search and found no results I was disappointed and questioned its value to me as a Learning Facilitator . Although, I did like the way the unit of work I viewed "if we shadows have offended" had a cross-curricular purpose catering to Drama, English and History in one program of study. Second Life on the other hand, really impressed me. Especially with the number of online virtual games students are playing these days, I liked how interactive it was. Delivering learning through a 3D virtual world enables the learner to immerse themselves in building knowledge on a topic and making learning more experimental, rather than delivering concepts for students to recall alike to traditional teaching practices of the past. I'm intrigued in using this as a creative tool in my classroom to get students to interact with a virtual theatre space to gain knowledge and insight into the practices used in this environment, like bumping in a production.