Tappedin

As far as professional development and using Tappedin, I decided after a week of exploration that it doesn't work well for my needs. For one thing, many of the discussions seemed old (2005, 2007). I also never encountered a whole lot of people to engage in discussion with. I also found it not to be a very intuitive environment to move about in. It reminded me a lot of Second Life (perhaps a precursor to SL or a lower tech educationally focused version?), which I also have not been a huge fan of. It may have its benefits for college level instruction, but I have not found uses for it at the elementary level. I feel that I spent a lot of time wandering around, but not really learning anything. I did not like that I was identified by name and could not choose a screen name for the application. I did join a couple of groups. One that I joined that had about 30 members was classroom management. As this is always a hot topic in education, I figured that there would be a lot of posts in the discussion. There really wasn't. I was disappointed to find people had posted questions and nobody had ever answered them. There were posts that were years old. Frankly, I get more out of my listserve (http://teachers.net/) that I belong to for third grade teachers. The teachers are supportive and active on the listserve. To me it is a better place for teachers (especially at the elementary level).