Yahoo! Teachers social network
Welcome back!
Feel free to suggest topics for me to write about using the Suggestions? tab to the right or use Formspring to ask me random stuff. Check Doug's FAQ first!
Yahoo! are launching a social network for teachers at teachers.yahoo.com. Given the plethora of such grassroots networks on Ning, this had better be something special…
Unfortunately, it’s US-centric. You can’t actually join the network yet, only ‘sign up for an invitation’. Once you do so and are invited to add yourself to a map of members, you’re prompted to ‘Enter city, state and zip code’. It didn’t understand any of the UK locations I tried to enter. 
There’s a sneak peek video which highlights a feature called ‘Gobbler’. This allows teachers to drag-and-drop web content into a portfolio file ready for lesson planning. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but may help teachers less familiar with tools such as diigo, Google Notebook, etc. Apparently it fits in with the ‘state standards’ – so again, not much use for teachers elsewhere in the world; and there’s no UK version yet.
Overall, it looks fairly slick, and anything which cuts down teacher preparation time is a bonus. I just hope that Yahoo! open their eyes to teachers beyond the USA… 
(via Mashable)
