Blogs in Education

1.) When exploring the web for “educational blogs,” I found that I got slightly varied results from the different search engines I used. The first search I preformed was in Google, and in my opinion seemed to be the most fruitful. Most of the results that were returned were sites that seemed somewhat professional and contained organized lists of education and educational blogs and resources. Almost all of the sites on the first search page seemed relevant to what I was looking for. The second search engine I used was msn.com. The results from this site were quite disappointing in comparison. Most of the sites that were returned were very specialized and irrelevant to what I was researching. An example of this was the second site on msn’s list, a Portuguese chemistry blog. It was Educational no doubt, but it had little to do with teaching and learning. The other sites on the first search page were similarly specific, and only a few of them had a good collection of education blogs in the context I was hoping for. The third search engine I used was yahoo. Yahoo came up with much better results than msn and most of them were either the same or similar to the results I received from Google. Again there was a multitude of sites that had decent lists of education web blogs and resources for education web blogs. There were a few irrelevant pages and pages that were listed several times unnecessarily, but for the most part yahoo provided an OK selection. I think that the results from the various search engines had much to do with the quality of the search engine and the various people that rely on each. Google is by far the most popular and utilized of the bunch and unsurprisingly it yielded the best results. A broader variety of people with different purposes rely on Google, and for this reason the results seemed broader and more relevant. MSN on the other hand is most often visited by internet users that have msn as their web provider, this is a much smaller number of people, and it seemed as though their search results were reflecting this by giving more specialized sites.
2.) There are many ways that blogs can be used in interesting and innovative ways within K-12 classrooms. One such way is the seamless integration of multimedia content into lessons. For example with blogs and wikis, students can interact with various types of information that wouldn’t be possible with a textbook such as current news articles, photo galleries, MP3 files/podcasts, YouTube Videos, etc. Another way that blogs are being innovatively used is by allowing students to publish their work in a public forum. A certain amount of prestige and pride is involved when a student finishes an important project and displays it somewhere in the school, but when students can exhibit their work to the entire world, the stakes are higher and the pride and prestige is increased. Yet another web blog innovation is one that directly relates to the previous one. When student work is displayed in personal blogs on the internet, other students in the class are invited and encouraged to acknowledge and appreciate that work by questioning, commenting and engaging in active discussions about it. Blogs allow students to extend their learning and build a community.
3.) RSS readers/aggregators are a novel and appealing concept for teachers fascinated by technology. RSS readers are sites and programs that allow you to have a variety of different information from a variety of different websites appear and update on one page. In a sense RSS readers and aggregators are like a unique and personalized web page that displays only the information that you want to have. These aggregators are an ideal tool to use in the classroom because they very well could be an excellent way of getting kids to utilize the internet for the purposes you want them to. For example, when a teacher tells his or her students to conduct some research on the web, distractions and irrelevant/unsubstantiated information can be a real risk. But say the teacher has a personal aggregator page at their disposal. They could pinpoint the types of sites and information that they want their students to access and consolidate it into one page for them to explore. That way the students could have the feeling of independence as they work on their research and the teacher can rest easy knowing that the resources that students will be investigating are safe, accessible, informative and valid. One of the aggregators I found that looked promising was bloglines.com, but before I would integrate this particular RSS reader into my classroom I would need to do further research on the kinds of feeds, blogs, and media provided.
4.) The impact that blogging and RSS readers will have on K-12 classrooms is enormous. By integrating these technological advances into the way children learn, we are essentially opening their minds to a new world of possibilities. Seeking knowledge and exchanging ideas are the values the internet was founded on, and by making the internet a common classroom tool, you are thus adopting these ideals into you curriculum.
5.) (P) One of the “pros” of using blogs and RSS readers in the classroom is the fact that with these tools, teachers can stay informed and up-to-date on the latest technology, learning theories, instructional practices, lesson plans, questions, comments, ideas etc. in the education community as well as in their own classroom. These tools provide a distinct online society that values technology, information and the free exchange of opinions and ideas. For teachers this is an invaluable resource in staying current for the benefit of their students. Not only are the teachers themselves helping to shape the curriculum, but with the help of blogs and web resources teachers around the world can help as well by sharing their knowledge and wisdom over the web. And for the students that use these tools in the classroom, the same rules apply. They are not working alone, they are essentially receiving help and encouragement from their other tech savvy classmates as well as experts and web users around the world. The teacher can stay current in the learning community because of blogs and aggregators and impart the skills and knowledge they receive onto their pupils.
(C ) One of the “cons” involved with RSS readers and blogs in the classroom is the security issue. While exposing your students to the wonders of the World Wide Web and the seemingly infinite knowledge of its users to your students is an indispensible learning opportunity, you might also be regrettably exposing your students to the less admirable corners of the internet as well. The greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the internet is the fact that anyone can contribute to its content, and although the particular blogs and sites used in the classroom would be no doubt screened and security protected by the teacher, there is always the risk that irrelevant, inappropriate and potentially dangerous web sites or web users could reach the students.
(P) Another pro of using RSS readers and blogs in the classroom, is the early integration of positive attitudes towards technology. By using these tools, you are essentially showing your students that technology is not a scary or intimidating thing. It is instead something designed to make their lives easier and help them in both their daily lives and in their education.
( C ) On the flipside of the previous pro, it is possible that students could become so enthralled in computers that they might view their everyday work and activities as boring or hard. We want students to have a positive attitude towards technology, but we do not want them to form a negative attitude towards things such as reading print books, handwriting assignments and playing outdoors for recess.