Reflection 2: Blog, Wikis, Podcasts, chs 3, 5, & 7

Richardson's book is revealing itself to be a really helpful "how-to" resource for teachers inexperienced with technology. However, for those who are more experienced with blogging pages and hosts for pictures, the new (to us) information he provides can get lost in the midst of prior knowledge. Despite this, I do feel like I've learned more about the resources I already use and have been exposed to other versions of resources I've used (Flickr seems to be a much more useful photo host than Photobucket, for example).

I do think that Richardson does himself a detriment for not including LiveJournal at all while discussing the ability to connect socially with others on your topic of interest as well as the ability to gather different blogs together. LiveJournal has personal journals as well as communities and a "friending" feature. Students could all have their own personal journals, and teachers could require them to "friend" each other - this would automatically provide them with a page that collected all the class posts together. They could also have RSS feeds sent into this friends page and could "friend" communities of interest (on whatever they're researching etc). The community feature could allow the teacher to create a community blog for the class that any of the students could post to as well. Of course, the teacher would have to ensure that the students were using the site responsibly and not coming upon or searching for inappropriate content, but this is true of any blogging site and the internet in general. In the world today, there is no escaping the internet and what can be found there. As Richardson noted in one of the earlier chapters, students need to learn responsible behavior, and using blogging sites is a fairly good way to do so.

In my first sentence, I noted how much these 3 chapters (3, 5, 7) function much more on the level of a "how-to" guide. Richardson spends most of these 3 chapters telling readers about different blogging resources (ch. 3), RSS feeds (ch. 5), and Flickr (ch. 7). However, he also makes a hugely important note on the ability to "create more relevant connections to the ideas and sources they need and then be efficient readers" (p. 86) as well as "create and connect content" (p. 109). That is why these myriad new resources can be so helpful as educational tools. A large part of critical thinking is the ability to create connections - that is an essential analytical tool. While students can learn these skills through more physical resources, the internet in particular is a resource that is uniqely suited for use in teaching students how to make connections. Additionally, our world is becoming more and more technological and internet-focused. Our students will need to know how to think critically about "ideas and sources" found on the internet - not being prepared to do so will leave them woefully unprepared for their futures (as I noted in my last reflection post, I believe - see tag to find it).

Richardson, Will, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Tools for the Web, Corwin Press (Thousand Oaks, CA), 2006.