Lions and Tiger and Bears, Oh My!

Much like Dorothy dancing down the trail toward the Emerald city, representing all possibilities realized, I find myself fearfully excited as I pace down my own path of realizing technology idealizations for the classroom. Rather than stepping time to ,"Lions, and tigers, and bears," I tune to, "Websites, and Blog Space, and Nings, Oh, My!" Throw in a "twitter" and those dang Flying Monkeys appear in my mind's eye.
In recent weeks, I began creating a class ning, a social network arena on which my students can play "Facebook," but with content aimed toward English. I don't know how well that will work out. I have blogged and had students blog, but not having required posts/comments, only a few posts truly elicited remarks. On night's before due dates, my frosh. blog lit up with students asking questions and truly interacted with one another, as I hoped from day one.
Now, as a tech. coach, I am working with teachers on developing blogs, nings, OneNote notebooks, and more. Mostly, helping colleagues to create something with technology to use in their classrooms. I'm liking it much because I get to work with colleagues I might not ordinarily, have time to work, and think in other areas that then encourages more from me. I like that.
As for the rest, I have discussed much to many about technology uses. After the tech. conference out in St. Charles, the biggest topic I took away was Twitter and social networking, hence the amount of time into it lately.