[quottrethew]

Hi Woodscooter.
Mahara is like facebook but just for individual colleges and unis. It has a forum and a blog section and students can send messages and post comments on people's walls just as they would in Facebook. I don't think it is available to the public because our college had to subscribe, but you can look. The advantage is they can upload lots of work on there and I don't get my e-mails clogged up with essays. Also you can see what each individual has done. It is great for Buddhism because they can add lots of bright colourful pictures to their essays: one of their assignments was to find different pictures of Buddhas and say how they represent different attitudes to the Buddha in Theravada and then the five dhyani Buddhas and the Taras in Mahayana. Buddhism is so colourful it is great to be able to exploit this. I also get them to put youtube videos on where they are relevant. I am looking into podcasts and stuff too at present so they get a multisensory approach and are not just writing essays in black and white! Am loving seeing their minds open to the ideas. Today, one of my students said he thinks that the ideas in the Matrix can be related to Theravada Buddhism and he quoted "People are not ready to be unplugged" as most people are too involved in all their attachments to stop and contemplate the Buddha's significance. Wow!

As for Twitter, I am not surprised by your comments. I don't have time for it either, but I would be interested in having a short Buddhist tweet every so often in order to stay topped up with Buddhism!!!!!

Thanks to all those who replied. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx