My first experience with Classroom 2.0

Classroom 2.0: My Personal Experience, Review and Analysis

The social network I chose to join was Classroom 2.0.  After filling out the required new member information I had to wait two days until my membership was approved by the website administrators. Once inside, I learned I’m able to chat with other Classroom 2.0 members who are online. At the time of my first session, no other members were online, but I posted a response to the most recent member who had used the chat feature.  In my post I asked the member to contact me so I could ask them a few questions about their own personal experience with the Classroom 2.0 site.  The next thing I did was update my profile and picture to give others more information about me and my background.  Next, I searched the groups section to preview those related to history and social studies.  I was a bit disappointed to find many of the groups I visited hadn’t had any activity for over several years, but I appreciated the fact the site keeps track of this data to help user analyze this type of information.  One particular site I found useful was one on civil rights.  The group’s title was “Civil Rights History” and it was created by a teacher named Kathy Emery from San Francisco, California. The latest post on this site has been made approximately a year ago, but the group provided links to a number of useful resources and websites related to the civil rights movement.

Based upon my initial experience with this site, I feel it offers a lot of potential for future use, but I’m a bit concerned over the fact much the group activity related to my topics of interest is quite dated. Looking forward, I may actually invite fellow teachers from my district to join so we can create our own group to collaborate on district projects such as our common social studies assessments.

In the future I see myself increasingly relying on online professional development for both personal growth and that of my students.  Sites like Classroom 2.0 enable one to establish valuable connections with others, and I believe these promise to increase both the quantity and quality of interactions I’ll have with other professionals who teach the same subjects as myself.