Classroom 2.0 is an award winning social networking site for educators that are interested in Web 2.0. This networking site is free to join, but because of spammers your membership does have to be approved before you can participate in the community. This site is full of resources, photos, videos, and collaboration opportunities with other educators from around the world. Just on the homepage you can few the forums, search videos and photos, find groups that interest you, and sort information on the site by tools, subject, and area. There are so many parts to this website that there is no way I could talk about everything. I will mention a few of my favorite areas that I think would be most helpful.
The first tab across the top of this website is called Forums. To me this is the “meat” of the website. This is where any member can post a comment or question and then have others reply to it. There are 762 pages worth of discussions that are going on right now. With the sheer volume of topics, you are sure to find something that is helpful. However, this number could be very intimidating. How could a teacher ever find enough time to look through every one of these 762 discussions? Well they don’t have to. There are several options on this site to sort discussions and find what you are looking for. First you can use the search box on the forums page. If you are looking for discussions that have to do with language for example, type in language. This might bring your pages down to 161 instead of 762. You can also use the drop down menus on the forums page to sort by latest activity, newest discussion, or most popular.
While these few sorting features can narrow your search some, you can use other ways to narrow it even more. If you go back to the home page, scroll half way down, and look on the left side, you will see that you can also choose topics under Tools, Subjects, or Areas. For examples, my emphasis is ES L. So I might want to find a discussion about that. All I have to do is look under By Subject then English as a Second Language. This search brings up a much more manageable, two pages of discussions. These discussion forums would be a great resource for new teachers. All teachers remember their first year and are very willing to pass on advice and resources if you ask.
Another great feature to this website is the Groups tab. On this page members can choose from 658 different groups that better fit their interest. You can meet other educators from around the world that have the same interests as you. For example there are 19 groups that have to do with ESL that I could look at joining. As with the discussion forum, you can use the search box at the top of the Groups page to narrow your search of groups.
The final area of this website that I think would be helpful is the Shows and Recordings tabs. Under these tabs you can find information for different educational webcasts and audio recordings. Some of the shows like Classroom 2.0 Live are live shows that allow viewers to participate in the show itself. Other shows include: Future of Education, EdTechTalk, LearnCentral.tv, and Edublogs Live Events. On the shows page you can find a date and time schedule as well as a description of the show’s content. It even provides a time zone converter so you don’t miss your show! Under the recordings tab it lists all of the recordings that Classroom 2.0 has access to. This page includes the shownotes to all recordings, which includes the links that were talked about in the recording. These shows and recordings are a wonderful resource to find professional development opportunities.
Overall, I think the Classroom 2.0 website is an excellent place to meet other educators around the world. It gives you the opportunity to learn in a safe, and comfortable environment. This site would especially be good for new teachers.
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