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.