What Technologies Should My Students Use NOW?

Tonight I have spent several hours visiting multiple social networking/Web 2.0 applications because they excite me. I've been to the EC Ning, Twitter (tweet me!), Dana Huff's blog, Jim Burke's blog, Blackwater Writing Project Blog, my own Literary Loafing blog, Readwriteweb blog, Eduwonk blog, Clay Burell's blog, YouTube, Goodreads, Diigo, and Digg. Oops, almost forgot my Gmail account. I've even stepped into the murky waters of Tweetdeck to see if it will really manage some of my networks.

How much is too much? When I read some of the technology blogs, I feel compelled to try out some of the latest applications. Today's Readwriteweb post from Marshall Kirkpatrick speculates that Twine is going to surpass delicious. Now, I do like the concept of delicious though I don't think about it more than maybe once a month and seldom remember to post there, but Twine? Today is the first day I've heard about it and it's ready to race past a web app that I do like. How do I keep up? I have to teach English to 11th graders, but participatory technologies keep drawing me in. Is there room in my English class for them?

I want to know where my kids go when they are online, and I know they are networking. I want to know how I can use that to my advantage as a classroom teacher. How do I help my students create meaningful discourse online in these environments? Should that even be a part of my job? Where does technology fit with my English classroom? We're moving beyond MS Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations (thank goodness!). At what point do we stop to consider what technologies our students should now be using in the secondary English classroom?