Blogs and Wikis in Education

1.) One interesting educational blog that I found was one in which the teacher posts up different art projects that have been tried in classrooms. She offers directions and helpful hints on how to do the project with the children. She also posts pictures of finished art projects that her students have done. She posts new projects every day. I also found a lot of educational blogs that are geared more towards college students. These blogs provide advice on different issues that college students deal with (strategies for test taking, resume writing, getting financial aid, etc.). A third blog that I found to be very useful is a website that provides information about the whole school. It provides upcoming events, breakfast and lunch menus, teacher’s notes, etc. This would be extremely useful for parents to really see what is going on in the school.

2.) An RSS reader is something that you can subscribe to from a specific website and these provide you with updates from that website. An aggregator is a program that you use to read the RSS reader files. You could find websites with interesting topics and subscribe so that students can keep up on the latest information about that subject.

3.) One advantage of using a blog or a wiki is that parents have the full advantage of being able to see what their children are working on or what is going on within the classroom or school setting. Another advantage of using something interactive is that students are able to work together and collaborate on projects, and they are able to access it in locations other than school. One downfall of using a blog or wiki is that not all students and parents have access to the Internet all the time. Another bad thing is that if you are using something like a wiki page for informational purposes, you need to make sure that you constantly update it and delete old information.