Blogs and Wikis in Education

Through a bit of searching around the web, I found a ton of blogs and wikis that were very innovative and interesting being used in classrooms around the nation. The first one that caught my eye, was a blog site by Kathy Schrock that included links to other educational blogs. This site lead me to find a large number of slide shows and power point presentations that could be used by teachers and students to learn new information ranging from all across the curriculum. The next site I found innovative was a wiki site called Welkers Wikinomics. This wiki provided information about understanding the different levels of economics, and had different semester plans for teaching them. I felt that this site could be used as a valuable study tool for students learning about economics, and also teachers wanting to learn new ways to teach it. The third and final site I found very intriguing was from Lewis Elementary School. This site allows students, teachers, and parents to all have one place to come to for information. It provided dates for upcoming events such as PTA meetings and school pictures, while also giving teachers a place to post their notes for students.

After researching RSS readers/aggregators, I felt that they could be very beneficial in any classroom setting. Particularly for my future health classes, I feel that I could set up an aggregator to pull in information about certain news articles related to alcohol abuse. The students could then read some of articles and write a report about how alcohol abuse can affect certain people. This could also be used for different topics such as drug abuse, or STI's such as AIDS.

Blogs and Wiki's can have a positive impact on learning in many ways. One of the most important factors is that is allows for so many new opportunities to learn from others. Especially considering that the Internet has a ton options. Another positive factor is that they can include more people within the learning, but still have the students be the center of learning.
Although they can be positive if used right, there is the idea that some of the information provided may not be accurate. Therefore, teachers must ensure that they provide a list of certain sites that are acceptable and credible. Another downside of blogs and wikis is that they force the students to spend even more time sitting at a computer, which is sometimes not necessary in today's sedentary society.