Blogs and Wikis in Education

1) Blogs are great for spreading innovative teaching ideas! They (blogs) and wikis can keep educators from across the globe in communication and extend new teaching concepts across those connections. They also facilitate more open communication between the teacher and the parent’s and guardians of their students.

Wikis promote collaborative learning as well as student engagement. Students can use blogs and wikis to work together in group projects, post homework, and other things online for all to access from within the wiki or blog.

One classroom I found used blogs/wikis as a student involved activity where the students were in charge of putting information out to the community about a topic that interests them.

2) I would probably use RSS readers/aggregators in a classroom to supervise my blogs and interesting news websites to better manage my time. They would be great to use if I had my students working on multiple blogs or wikis in the classroom and I needed to keep an eye on their daily progress.

3) There are many great things about the use of blogs and wikis in the classroom, but best of all is the communication it provides with student and student’s guardians. It is also a great learning opportunity for both students and teachers. They provide a great basis for the exchange of ideas. There are some downsides to having blogs and wikis in the classroom however. One problem with having them is that they assume that the students would have the previous knowledge needed to use the computer (and the internet for that matter) needed to make the websites. They also assume that the students have access to the internet or a computer in their home.