Future Me

I'm back from the big ISTE conference! I'm still not sure I've processed everything I've seen. I met some incredible people and I fell in love with the city of San Antonio. It's kind of amazing how many bloggers I met while I was there. I'll be posting more pix from those meet-ups really soon.

I have to start blogging about everything I learned before I forget it all y'all! <---like that little Texas twang I added there? Don't worry, it won't last. And really, I didn't hear it all that much while I was there.

I'm starting with something easy to use and share. It's called FutureMe.org. 

Future Me is a way to send an email to yourself at a pre-determined time in the future. So, I could email myself right now all the things I did and saw in Texas and a year or five years from now I'll get an email from myself in the past!

The concept is cool and all, but how can you use it in your classroom right? Well, I have come up with a few ideas:

In the interest of full disclosure, I can see two potential hang-ups with using the site with early elementary kids. First, they can't type! It's almost painful to watch them hunt and peck to write a simple sentence, let alone compose a lengthly letter to themselves. A parent volunteer might come in handy here. You can have your students write in their writers' notebooks and have a parent, older sibling or student needing service hours type for them at some point.  You can even have the students write their email using any email program to you and you can cut and paste the letters into Future Me for them. Just be sure to have students date the letters so that you can choose an appropriate date to send it to the future.

Secondly, the site isn't specifically designed for children and users can choose for their letters to be displayed randomly on the site as "public but anonymous". Most of those letters are displayed on a separate page though. Any of the above options would help out with that concern.

Despite some of the concerns above, I think the idea is a pretty cool one that can have many educational uses. I emailed them about adding a kid-friendlyversion of the site. Maybe they'll see the potential too!