Social Networking in Education Has a Milestone Day

Two big milestones...

Thanks to all of you who are using Classroom 2.0 and who have helped to show the value of collaborative social communities in professional development and education. As of earlier today we now have over 10,000 members... amazing!

Thanks for all of your great questions, discussions, and collaborations--and especially for your welcoming attitudes and the way in which you invite and help other educators to learn about Web 2.0 and colllaborative technologies.

And... Ning in Education just hit 2,000 members. What a day...!

Thanks to everyone there for your progressive exploring and use of Ning and social networking in education. It's great to be associated with you. Don't forget to add your educational Ning networks to the wiki at http://socialnetworksined.wikispaces.com/. If you need help doing so, feel free to email me.

Big thanks go to the folks at Ning (Marc, Gina, Athena, Bob, Kyle, and everyone else) who've helped to create a product that--while not intended for the education market--has been so helpful in showing that social networking can have a great and positive impact on education. Your support, your enthusiasm, and the ad-free program have been great!

Kind of spooky (and fun) that both networks hit such significant milestones with a few hours of each other.

Mr. Podcast: Eric Langhorst (Classroom 2.0, Episode 1)

Eric Langhorst teaches 8th-grade American History at South Valley Junior High School in Liberty, Missouri. And he's a great podcaster. Not only does he create audio study guides for his students before tests ("studycasts"), he also has a podcast series for history teachers called Speaking of History.

I interviewed Eric as the first in a planned series of interviews on classroom use of Web 2.0 tools, which I'm calling "Classroom 2.0," and which I'll also post at the Classroom 2.0 social network site.

Listen to the the Interview in MP3 format
Listen to the Interview in Vorbis OGG format

Subscribe to this AudioCast:

Web 2.0: A Personal Learning Renaissance

Yesterday, on the Classroom 2.0 social network, Elizabeth Davis posted:

"Following and reading blogs, participating in ning, contributing to wikis, writing in my blog, I haven't thought this much in years. It truly is an amazing phenomenon. I feel so intellectually alive. I'm inspired and challenged constantly. The blogs I read lead me to question and explore new tools and Websites. I haven't written this much since I was in school. It is all so exciting and energizing. For me, classroom 2.0 could just be about my own growth and learning and that would be enough."

"Teacher K" then commented:

"I agree! I am reading and thinking and writing far more now than I have in years. All of this content is helping me to do new things in my classroom, and helping me to see new possibilities for my colleagues as well."

I would echo by saying that Web 2.0 has meant a personal learning renaissance for me as well. Starting to blog kindled in me something that led me to be an active learner again, something that had been missing from my life for some number of years in the midst of other good things: raising kids, serving in my church, and working. Now I am feeling engaged in learning again. Will Richardson captured this, I think, when he said: "I've learned more in my four-plus years as a blogger than I have in all my years of formal education."

I think it is our new personal learning experiences with Web 2.0 that are driving many of us to look for ways to bring this feeling of engagement into the school and the classroom. It's not the tools, necessarily, but the level of engagement we want to share. This is also why I sense a growing consensus among the educational bloggers that the best way to bring change to the classroom is to help the teachers feel it themselves. As Elizabeth says in the same post:

"I hope I can help my colleagues to see the potential I see and feel the buzz that I feel. This is the first step to bringing it to the kids. I think teachers have to feel it for themselves first. I hope I can bring that to them. I think, with the help of this community, I probably can!"