We’ve all heard about Facebook and MySpace, but for those of us just a teensy bit older than 25, there’s another social networking service called Ning. Just like MySpace and Facebook, the site is blocked by the school system. However, I found I could still get to a really great Ning community called Classroom 2.0. The pictures don’t work if you are in the school building, but the text is there. It’s a great resource! If you’ve been thinking about learning more about social networks, nothing’s better than giving one a try!

You are teaching class. You are incredibly excited because your lesson utilizes some very neat Web 2.0 technology. Your ITRT is very proud.

You set the stage for you lesson by introducing the blog (or wiki, or podcast, or any other Web 2.0 teaching tool) that you’ve integrated into the day’s lesson. You look out into the their eyes, expecting to see looks of appreciation for your awesome lesson planning creativity. Instead, you get nothing but blank stares–nada, nothing, zip. Where is the excitement for technology that your ITRT and the experts have promised will be there?

Yes, it does happen. In spite of the studies that tell us that our students know more about and are more comfortable with techology than any of us born before 1990 could ever hope to be, the fact is that we do have kids who are still wading in the shallows rather than riding the technology tidal wave. And that’s OK.

David Warlick wrote about this recently in his post, Such a Quiet Revolution. In it he wrote, ”Today’s change is fast. I suspect, aside from great cataclysms, faster than any at time before. But it’s not so fast that it really stirs up the wind.” And that’s what we have–a technology revolution that’s moving rapidly, but the winds of change are more like a whispering breeze rather than a hurricane gale.

Does that mean we should give up on technology? Of course not. Just because some of our students are still waders, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t learn to swim. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, technology needs to be an integral part in our students’ education if we hope for them to be able to compete in today’s global economy.

So what does this mean for teachers? It means that in spite of the occasional blank stares, don’t feel disheartened. Like virtually everything we do in teaching, we just have to keep trying. It’s hard to imagine, but just a few years ago “surfing” meant something totally different and “googling” and “blogging” were gibberish. Things are changing. Our kids WILL “get it”.

They have to.