Blogs and Wikis in Education Project

1. Three ways blogs and/or wikis are being used in innovative ways in the classroom are:

• One teacher is using her blog to post information and projects that students have created. One of the many posts had the ability to listen to sound bites of the children reading their Mother's Day messages to their moms. Many of the students projects were accessible for viewing.
  
• One school is using a blog site as a way to communicate with parents and students. This school has many updates on the main page, and also has separate notes from many of the teachers that can be accessed. This is really nice because the parents can get general information and announcements that pertain to the entire school, as well as information that applies to their specific classroom.
  
• There is a teacher who has lists of spelling words for each child, interactive learning tools as well as different notes and lessons about words that start with different sounds. She has different updates available as well as a fun and inviting look to her blog.
  

2. RSS readers/aggregators could be used in the classroom by subscribing to certain sites that are often changed in particular subjects. For example, if teaching current events, you could set an aggregator on one of the news sites, like KGW for the Vancouver/Portland area. That way, in the event that something of interest to the classroom topics is on the site, it would be easily accessible, and save time searching the site.

3a. Two pros of using Blogs and Wikis in education are:

• Information is easily accessible to students, parents, and teachers. It is easy to share information regarding grades, lesson plans and/or current events that students, teachers and parents need to be aware of.
  
• Children need to be familiar with all the Web 2.0 that is available to them in order to succeed throughout their time in school. Some students may not have access to these technologies at home, so using them in the classroom can be a great help in teaching the children how to use these technologies, so they are not left behind the ever growing curve of technology users.
  

3b. Two cons of using Blogs and Wikis in education are:

• Everything is accessible to parents and students. It is important to remember to make everything viewable information you want the public to know. There is limited privacy with these blogs. Anything you would not want a parent or student to see must be kept offline
  
• Some students or parents may not be able to access the information online. Some may not have internet in their own homes, so projects or homework may not be able to be able to be described or assigned online. It would be unfair to hold a child accountable for a project or assignment that they could not access. Knowing the economic background of each child would help to eliminate this.
  

MI in the classroom

While in class on Tuesday, we all took a quiz to see what our strengths were out of the Multiple intelligences. Although I had 70% or higher on each intelligence, there were two that were at 100%. The MI's that were at 100% were Kinesthetic (which I will focus more on) and Intrapersonal. The information below is a collection of my thoughts and ideas based off of my findings from the site (surfaquarium.com/mi/) Any quotes in this blog are directly from that website.

1. Some of the core characteristics of Kinesthetic learners are sensory, reflexive, tactile, concrete, coordinated, and task oriented. Out of these characteristics, I feel I most identify with sensory, internalizing information through bodily sensation, reflexive, responding quickly and intuitively to physical stimulus, and task oriented, which is strives to learn by doing. I feel these fit me well because I do react quickly and on instinct to things, and I love learning by exerience, or "doing." I like projects where I can learn to create a lesson plan, by actually creating one, for example.

The other MI that was very high for me was Intrapersonal. This MI's characteristics are Affective Awareness, Ethical Awareness, Self-Regulation, and Metacognition. I believe I can identify most with Affective Awareness, "the knowledge of one's feelings, attitudes and outlook" and Self-Regulation, "monitoring one's thoughts, actions and behavior" the most. I beleive these to be true because I tend to understand exactly how I feel about any particular thing, right away. I also like to hold myself accountable for my own thoughts and behavior and I am usually aware of them as well. I tend to learn a lot by thinking about something to myself for awhile.

2. For kinesthetic children, they like to interact with objects in their environment. They usually like to do activities that require being "hands-on." They may prefer learning centers and may also possess strong motor skills, are generally different than hyper children and enjoy games and tasks that require activity or groups.

3. Some of the ways I can incorporate Kinesthetic learning into my classroom is to make sure to plan activities in the classroom that can be hands-on, allowing the students to play with things to learn about them. Also, Kinesthetic learners can benefit from using different learning centers in the classroom. I could set up a reading center, a writing center, etc. to allow a specific part of the room to be associated with different subjects. I can try to incorporate song and dance, giving children the opportunity to get out of their seats and feel the learning, rather than only see it. Three dimensional objects for learning are also very helpful for kinesthetic learners, so they can see and feel the learning at the same time.

4. Some of the technologies that can be helpful to Kinesthetic learners are the mouse, a joystick, building tools, P.E. equipment, materials that can be manipulated, simulations and the wheel and axels.

5. I think it is very important, as a teacher, to be aware of the multiple intelligences. It can impact my classroom because if I have the knowledge of how different children learn, then I can form a years worth of material that can hit on every level of intelligence, allowing all the children the opportunity to succeed, as they will have different levels of different intelligences. As I find out what intelligences best help my students learn, I can tailor my lessons to help them have a higher chance at success.

Here is a copy of my MI profile: