Blogs and Wikis in Education

1. Identify and describe 3 interesting/innovative ways blogs and/or wikis are being used in K-12 classrooms.

Blogs and Wikis can provide a great place for students to journal about the day. I remember in elementary school that we had daily journals that we wrote in. It would be cool if students could to be able to do this in a place where classmates could communicate with each other through this activity. This could not only help challenge and stretch their thinking through peer collaboration but even create stronger social peer bonds through finding commonalities between each other.

These could also be a great tool for teachers when it comes to communicating with students. A lot of the time I feel like most students have the same questions about homework and projects after the school day is over. If a teacher had a general area where instructions can be posted about an assignment and students can publicly ask questions about it, a teacher's response would be seen by all. This would make things easier on both the student and the teacher since this would help students work with other students who are having the same issues or see who has a grasp on the project and turn to him or her for peer support.

A third interesting way to use a blog or wiki would be to have students use these to partner with other students in different locations in the country, or even world. They could have a pen pal system to collaborate on their work or give a different perspective/angle to a project. This would most likely be the most beneficial for social study projects or assignments. If a student has geography project, or even history project, what a better way to build a report by having assistance from a student from that specific area!

1. Describe how you might use RSS readers/aggregators within a classroom setting.

An RSS reader/aggregator would be a greatly beneficial tool for a teacher in a classroom setting. If a teacher is having his or her students use blogs or wikis to post their work or to communicate with others, he or she could subscribe to each individual students site in order to be notified when new things or added. Instead of a teacher constantly monitoring each individual website to check to see if a student has sumbitted his or her work the teacher can go to a single site that says who has submitted what, then allowing a teacher to go and retrieve his or her student's info. Students could also utilize this tool by subscribing to different news sites that could update them on local and world news that they could use to pull information from for posts or assignments.

1. Describe at least 2 pros and 2 cons of using blogs and wikis in education.

Pro 1: Students could continue collaborting on assingments out side of class and build a thread of communication.
Pro 2: Teachers can answer questions for the class all at one play where it is public for all rather then answering the same questions over and over again for students individually

Con 1: If students use an online blog as a journal rather then a notebook they might be hesistant to share all the ideas and thoughts since they are public. The students could feel restricted.
Con 2: Not all students could have access to internet let along a computer, leading to some students being isolated from the class.