Thanks for stories on Chinese New Year Angela McV (OH) http://goo.gl/LXXTS and Amanda C (NYC) http://goo.gl/9Go9Q! (#autism #spedchat) We appreciate your sharing your terrific lessons with the VizZle community!

Trying to get access to tools like Facebook for your classroom? I found an article from a respected IT magazine (and a bit of insight) that might help you sway your powers-that-be. Scroll down for more and a link…

I am pretty tech-hip for my generation (and no, you don’t get to know how old I am just because I said that. Take my word for it.) And I admit, I was a Facebook pooh-pooh-er. Especially when it came to Facebook as a classroom tool. Much of my initial trepidation was because I just didn’t understand it. When I initially tried to learn about it, the whole thing just made me feel like an out-of-it geezerette (and, of course, we all seek out and embrace things that make us feel that way (¬_¬) ).

The Conservative Tech Hip

Considering that a good number of IT people in charge of making the decisions about what is and isn’t allowed on our classrooms are the tech-hip of my generation (and tend to be a conservative lot), I have to wonder if the knee-jerk “not in my backyard” reaction from so many IT admins is partly a generational/understanding thing. Being technically adept doesn’t automatically make somebody able to immediately grasp and accept paradigm shifts like Facebook (especially when it doesn’t do a good job of explaining itself—or at least it didn’t when it first arrived on the scene).

A Trusted Source

If you are trying to convince the powers-that-be at your school or in your district to be more open to tools like Facebook, don’t take it for granted that they know what Facebook is all about. Consider sending them a link to an article with your plea like this one in Tech & Learning Magazine. It takes a bit of forever to load, but the information is worth the wait (although you might want to preface it with a note saying something along the lines of “The beginning is a bit preachy, but something like this could make my communications so much more efficient and save me so much time!” [Let’s face it—all admins love to hear about efficiency boosters…])

Good luck in your quest! I hope this helps.

As of today, facebook has a new system for registering your vote of confidence–the new “Like” button replaces the old “become a fan.” Come join the conversation on our page at VizZle facebook and let us know if you “like” it!