Blogs and Wikis in Education

When asked to use three different search engines while searching “Educational Blogs” and “Educational Wikis” I found that there were many similar results. I used the Google, Dogpile, and Yahoo search engines and found the same results on the first page for all three engines. For the blogs, the first webpage available was the same on all three pages! However, this was not the case for the wikis.

Blogs and wikis are being used in many interesting and innovative ways within kindergarten and 12th grade classrooms. For example, in budtheteacher.typepad.com Bud allows interaction through live blogging. He is able to communicate with his students as if they were speaking in person. A great teaching tool I found at edublog.com was a place where students can post responses to specific questions about a story and as a forum for sharing students’ individual responses about their readings. Lastly, at lewiselementary.org, I found many useful tools that can keep parents, as well as students updated at all times! The calendar of events, random announcements, principle notes, and curriculum are just several of the many examples that this website used to be innovative.

A RSS reader also known as an aggregator is a client software or a Web application which collects news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and blogs in a single location for easy viewing. Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. This will be helpful with a classroom setting because when one of your students turns in an assignment then you would be aware of it right away.

Blogs and wikis have many pros as well as a few cons. Some of the pros these web technologies have to offer include that they provide important information to your students, your parents, and anyone that feels they need to know and also blogging and wikis are very environmental friendly; they don’t require paper so you can “go green” effectively. Blogs and wikis also have their cons. For example, if you are lazy with your blog and do not update your information when students and parents are counting on you, this can be a disadvantage. Also, if there is a power outage and no other way of getting to the assignments or handouts, this can prove to be difficult.