Blogs, Wikis, and Read/Write Web... Oh My

Today in class, and out of class, we discussed the advances of the read/write web has made on education. We currently use blogs in grade class to document our weekly growth as educators and reflect on what we have learned. This is a common use for blogs, people sharing information in a format which solicits feedback and conversations about the content. I think it will be a helpful reflection piece when we are doing our final comps. I enjoyed the time we had this week to look for professional blogs which might help advance our teaching. I would be interested to get those on an RSS feed so I can regularly check them. I would also be interested in putting a comment Q&A section on my class website for students and parents to use, not sure if that can be done with our restrictive site, but we can always try.

As for wikis, I struggle with this. It is difficult to assign Internet work to students who do not have access at home and do not have a study hall. Yes they can come in at lunch and after school, but I don't think the equity is there. Maybe for those students we could use a call-in podcast for them. Another aspect that I wrote about in one of my book responses was the fact that many programs do not have equation editors to use, such as blogger. This makes it very difficult and time consuming for students to write mathematical responses and I know they will spend more time focusing on how to use the technology as opposed to focusing on the content. We shall see... I'm still not convinced of it's use for my class the way it is currently. I can see it as a good place to share ideas and have students reflect upon their learning, maybe I will explore this route. We shall see.