Weblogs and Wikis

"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste the experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for new and richer experiences."
- Eleanor Roosevelt      
Weblogs

Teacher’s use of Weblogs will depend on their goals and the expected outcomes for their students.   Why teachers should blog  In order for educators to teach students about blogs and other web based programs, they must have the same experiences.  Support Blogging 

As a teacher, I promote and encourage students to engage in reading and writing daily. The more one practices something the better they become at it.  

Concert pianist cannot achieve their stature without constant practice.

                                                           
 Likewise, the professional baseball player would not be playing for the Red Sox or Yankees if they weren’t committed to becoming experts at their sport. Using Blogs, Wikis, and other websites are ways to build student’s confidence in their literacy and the more opportunities they have, the more proficient they will become.  

                                                               

Students learn from teacher modeling.  The educator must exhibit the appropriate use of blogs and explain the importance of using links and pictures as ways to enhance student work.    Hopes and Wishes for 2013 by David Warlink.  I think my students would become better writers if they published their work using a website.  I continually remind my students about the importance of writing fluently and sequentially.  In my last grad class, the course emphasized the importance of student’s listening to each other’s writing.  If students see their work published on a website, it may offer more motivation. Mrs. Norton's class website Publishing work on a website would offer feedback from other students, so students would develop a better understanding of the importance of their writing.
Although the school where I work has a website with some links for the general population of students to use for practicing math and reading, I think it would be useful for students to have more specific resources as a tool to increase reading comprehension and writing skills in the areas they are studying in class.

Since my students are 8 and 9 and several do not have computers at home, most of the opportunities for practicing blogs would occur in the classroom.  All parents have signed a release allowing permission for their child to be published on the web.  Teachers must be vigilant to monitor students’ work for safety reasons. Instead of reading exemplars of student’s work to the class, student writing could be posted on a website. Examples of student writing

Rubrics, which are evaluation tools for student work in many content areas, can be utilized to assess student’s work on the web. I use it in the classroom for written responses and performance assessments, so students are familiar with this.
 
During our unit on Fables and Folktales, students can write a fable on the weblog and after they finish, they will add pictures related to the story.  In order to effectively stimulate higher order thinking skills, they could compare their fable to one that they read about on the website.  Following this, they can write comments about the similarities and differences of their fable to the one they read about.  To engage the students, further they could embed links to fables from www.unitedstreaming.com so that other students might enjoy learning about other fables.  All these projects would be closely monitored to ensure student’s use the Web appropriately. Student Safety of Internet
Wikis 
http://www.wikipedia.org/ is a resource frequented by many students. If this site can be edited by anyone, then how valid is the information on it?  Since there are “400,000 edits a day and misinformation is corrected regularly”, Richardson claims it is more reliable than people have thought (Richard, 2010). Wikis remind me of the quote from the original Star Trek series: "Space the final frontier...to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before" (Wikipedia.org).
                                                           

           Wikis promote collaboration which is a critical component for student learning in school and beyond in the job market.  Since large corporations are using Wikis, student should have the exposure to engage in wikis.

When my students undertake their research projects this year, they will be allowed to use Wikipedia as one resource.  Student Research Project  Students must learn to evaluate and analyze the perspective of the information they find on a website by using a site, like  http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Using a web based wiki for students is an option because it has a password and log in system.  This will appease parents and allow the teacher control over the wikis. The purpose for students to use wikis in my class would be to teach each other. Presently, in my classroom, students work cooperatively and discuss content information.  Wikis would add another dimension to this level of collaboration. Student Collaboration on Writing  Students could add graphics and links to enhance their wikis. 

        Another alternative for Wikis is http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_portal.   Students would be thrilled to edit books on the web.  Editing Books On-Line   It would promote and enrich student’s critical thinking skills because they would need to comprehend, analyze and evaluate what they read and then use their background knowledge to revise and change the story. This adds a perspective to stretch their understanding of stories and writing. Wikijunior 

                                        

Using wikis by connecting with other schools around the world provides rich diverse learning experiences for students because they share their ideas and gain knowledge of people who are from different cultures and geographical areas.
                        
                                               

I like the idea Shelley Paul, a Georgia teacher, offered about doing a book study on a wiki (Richardson, 2010).  When students in my class read about Native Americans or Titanic, they could talk to authors about the story and integrate the information learned from other resources into their learning. 

           Weblogs and Wikis are changing the face of education.  Students need to have these experiences in the classroom to prepare them for the future.