Other technologies/social networking tools for education I have learned in EDM 310

As an assignment for my EDM 310 class, I have been researching and navigating twitter for the past couple of days. This social networking program is the hardest to navigate, in my opinion, out of all the other networking systems we have learned about. I can see, however, by viewing other people's profiles and posting questions, how useful it can be for educators. Often it is just an open discussion on ideas and a way to post helpful sites. After a while of navigating, I found a feature called monittor that allows you to type in a subject and receive immediate hits from local people. Here I found a twitterer called "AutismTweetes" where I found tons of informative, useful information and websites about autism. Twitter seems to be a great tool to "meet" other people around the world that have the same interests whether it be music, career oriented, or educational. It also seems to be a good way of receiving news and updates on companies and even musicians/bands. However, I do feel that the way twitter is set up could be a little more simplistic and easy to navigate. Twitter is something that I will certainly continue, and try to learn more about in order to be a well informed teacher in the future.

Youtube is another great tool used for worldwide education. I was an occasional youtube user before my EDM310 class, but I didn't know that educators and students were using it in such a positive way. When searching youtube for educational videos, I found certain videos that struck my attention as a future special educator. Education Techniques for Autism was particularly interesting and helpful. Another couple of great vidoes I found for those interested in autism education are Mild Autism and Education, and Understanding high fuctioning kids. I think the greatest part about finding videos on youtube such as these is how easy youtube makes them to share. You can choose to post videos from the youtube page directly onto your personal myspace, facebook, or twitter accounts. You don't even have to copy and paste the link! I will use youtube as a tool throughout the rest of college and when I become a teacher so I can have the most extensive and updated knowledge available about autism and early childhood education.