In chapter 4 Dr. Kist discusses student access to sites such as blogger. Many teachers are trying to get more freedom in the world of censorship for their students. These sites are blocked for obvious reasons. I feel there may be more educational disadvantages for students not being exposed to the "blogosphere" than there are advantages for students not being able to view inappropraite material online.
On page 72 in the chapter, I learned about Technoati. This is a website used for searching specifically through blogs. I checked out the site myself to see how it worked. You can type in any subject and blogs pertaining to that issue will come up. It works just like Google, but it only looks through blogs.
Page 72 also discussed the need for teachers to learn how to blog themselves. It is an exciting world to get into and I am glad I was given the opportunity in this class.
One thing I always wanted to do in a classroom are journals. If something is not personal or private, why not blog about it? I may have my students do both.
One downfall I see to blogging is if students do not have access to a computer at home. If the school is blocking the site, students may not have other access to do their assignment.
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On page 55 there was a great list of a few rules that establish a respectful blogosphere within the class. I think it would be nice to establish these rules right away, to create a list of rules along with students that looks like this and serves the same purpose: being respectful to each other.
ReplyDeleteI was considering the possibility of students not having computers, also. Hopefully, there is a site that students can use that the school doesn't block. If there isn't, maybe the assignment to be adjusted and use a wiki instead? Just a thought :)
I agree about the positives of blogs outweighing the negatives of them. Whether we realize it or not, if you think back to yourself at that age, we had access to a lot more bad material than our parents and teachers realized. I feel this is especially true just because, during our earlier school years at least, the internet as a popular thing was so new and our parents were hardly even aware of all of the bad things we were being opened up to. If a student is going to find bad things through blog use, they're going to find them on their own regardless of whether we assign them to use a blog for the class or not. If anything, I feel our assigning the use of a blog will only steer them into a more purposeful use of a blog/the internet.
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