Better late than never!

Hello fellow teachers!
I'm pleased to be here with you test-driving all these neat gadgets and apps. I must confess that at the moment, this being my first blog and first igoogle experience and first etc etc everything we're doing, I am dipping one toe in this ocean of technology and deciding whether I'm going to dive in.
Like I have a choice, right?
I came to this course as a function of being an adjunct English faculty, primarily ENG 102, research writing. I, like you, Shelley, and probably some of the rest of my classmates, am a great believer in social constructivist theories of learning and the power of the community of learners to produce the learning experience. So these tools make a lot of sense, especially if I'm going to be working with people who use them and value them.
In my world outside of teaching English, I am finishing my certification to become a yoga instructor this spring. In my training, we have spent a lot of time and effort to calm the "chatter of the mind" (Patanjali). As I learn about and begin to use these instructional tools, I see how they can become either a way to increase this chatter in our lives, or a way to organize and manage it.
I mean, I could spend hours just finding stuff to giggle at on YouTube or The Onion. I could spend hours debating different recipes for guacamole (no tomatoes!). Fortunately (or sometimes, unfortunately), my two little ones pull me off into their world of chatter before I spend too much time in the world of giggles.
Okay, I'm getting pulled away now, but I look forward to connecting with my students on their terms through these tools in this course.