Thing 2: Thoughts about Web 2.0
I have never “blogged” before this course. I never really understood the point of blogging and never really gave much thought to the importance of it. Shortly after I signed up for this course, I received the March 2008 issue of Real Simple which featured an article on the best blogs. Their description of blogs in general is priceless and pretty much sums up my previous feelings about them: “To be sure, a lot of them – maybe most – are of interest to two people: the blogger and the blogger’s mother.”
As I work on completing Thing 3 I’m starting to come around to the idea of blogs, though.
After viewing Michael Wesch’s A Vision of Students Today, it is apparent that today’s students are changing, and we as educators will have to adapt our methods of teaching in order to reach our youth. David Warlick paints quite a picture in his article, A Day in the Life of Web 2.0, and using daily blogs, subscribing to and creating podcasts, and editing wikis even sounds exciting!
I certainly see the worth of subscribing to blogs where I can share strategies and materials with fellow teachers and share information with my administrators. I’m particularly interested in creating a class blog where my students can discuss a novel that we are reading and interact with each other on-line (instead of answering the traditional x number of study guide questions for each chapter). I think that this is a far better way of engaging my students, especially pre-teens whose interest tends to wane.
I know that the idea of podcasting is not new but I have never thought about using them to view class discussions, performances, and PTO meetings. This is a great resources for parents, teachers, and students.
The only problem with web 2.0 that I see (beyond my own limitations) is sorting out what is truly relevant and what is not. There is a massive amount of information on the web about any given topic, and I think that you have to be very selective about what you use. This screening process is a quite daunting, and if I have trouble deciding what is worthy of using in the classroom, I’m sure that my students might have this problem as well. However, I’m sure that my great network of K12 Learning Web 2.0 friends will point me in the right direction.
Oh, and if you want to find out what blogs Real Simple thinks are worth a second glance, go to:
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
March 10th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Hey Jenny,
Below is a link of a classroom blog at the Primary School where the kids are blogging and podcasting. Take a look, if you are interested let me know and I will be happy to set one up for you and show your kids how to enter posts.
http://blog.woodward.edu/ps_edmison
Alia also has a blog for her class:
http://blog.woodward.edu/alia
Nneka