Group Carissa Tester, Adrion Walker
Group Reviews as one document. Richardson, Dixon, and Collins.
Chapter one of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful Web Tools for Classrooms touches on the history and initial vision of the web from it creator and how it has begun to reach those initial goals. This chapter goes on to explain how the web is no longer just for read and view but it has matured into an interactive tool. The key components and success to a read and write web are creating connections and groups. The passion and interests of common individuals that form connections and groups across that web that would not normally take place in a few years. Many areas have caught on to the change of groups and connections and groups on the web. Politics, businesses, and in our people for their own personal use have used these groups to their advantages in gaining votes and promoting their products. As well as web user are easily publishing text, pictures, and videos. As many areas are catching on Education is slow to adapt but it is inevitable. Our students are using many technology tools but without proper guidance while many teachers have no clue about Facebook, podcast, and blogs. The tools in this book are easy ways to use within a classroom and will help close the gap. Richardson shares with educators a few tools that can be used in the education that will connect technology with education. The tools are Weblogs, Wikis, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Aggregators, Social Bookmarking, Online Photo Galleries, Audio/Video Casting, Twitter, and Social Networking Sites.The next chapter that we chose to review was chapter 2. This chapter explain what Weblogs are and how they can be used in education. A weblog is website that is “compromised of reflections and conversations. (p. 17) Weblog are not content or journals of information but discussion and sharing of ideas and opinions. Many young adults use these site recklessly instead of finding their educational value and purpose. Many stories have surfaced of the dangers of predators and students endangering themselves by divulging too much personal information. Richardson shows the “blogging is genre that engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the day’s events or feelings. (P. 19).” This chapter further explains a variety of way to use Weblogs in schools. Weblogs can be use as a “classroom portal” to publish assignments, notes, important information, syllabuses, classroom rules, etc. As you read, the chapter explains the many ideas to use Weblogs in your classroom. From Electronic Portfolio, School Website, From a student’s educational standpoint weblog improve student’s learning. One major point discussed in this section is that “weblog truly expand the wall’s of the classroom (P.26).” Furthermore, weblog support different learning styles. Countless ideas are embedded into this chapter about weblog and education. This chapter, Chapter 3, is about how all parents, students, and administrators are clear on why this technology is being used in the classroom. For parents the first thing that they can do to make sure their child is safe is give their student permission to use this technology for school. Most schools send home an acceptable use sheet to sign and parents should be aware of this and make sure that they get one. Parents also need to communicate with teachers about what the teacher is doing to make sure that student privacy is protected. Parents need to make sure they talk to their children about never putting personal information on the blogs and the parents also need to know the process for reporting problems with blog content. Lastly as a parent they need to oversee the student’s blog and then decide what to do with it at the end of the course. When creating a weblog with students always start small and work your way up. Blogger.com created by Google is one of the easiest weblogs for anyone to use, there is no perfect way to use a blog but this one is up there for ease of use and not a lot of confusion. As a teacher it is hard to track all of what your students are doing, however, you can follow your students and watch their posts. You can edit and have different templates and even add pictures to blogs as well.This chapter, chapter 4, is about Wikis and how easy it is for all people who are a part of one to collaborate on it. It starts out by introducing Wikipedia and what a great and easy website it is to use; a wealth of knowledge that people have come together to share. The wiki part of the word comes from the Hawaiian word wiki wiki which means quick. It is an easy authoring tool with over 3 million entries at this point in English. A person can fix, erase, or add just about anything they would like with the original author being able to change it back at any time. One could say that Wikipedia is the original poster child for collaborative construction of knowledge and web based interaction. Businesses use Wiki’s to keep track of their work and teachers and students are using it as blog based sites. If teachers are using Wikipedia in school they should definitely check the accuracy before they have their students look at the site page and they also should be aware of the fact that Wikipedia is a collaborative site, meaning not one person has written the whole thing by themselves. As a teacher you can create an online text for your curriculum with a Wiki that your students can contribute to. This could become a resource for best practices and something that other teachers and their students could use as well. The chapter then gives examples of Wikis in classrooms some that have been very successful right here in Georgia! Creating a Wiki as a teacher is fairly easy and once you get the hang of it you can do great things in the classroom.
In the Dixon book the first chapter we decided to review was Facebook. Facebook is the most popular social networking site currently on the internet. Dixons explains some detailed information in the Facebook chapter of The Innovative School Leaders Guide to Social Media. This chapter is not only for the novice user of Facebook, but it also is very helpful to those that have quite a handle on the social media site. From post and pictures, to scheduling events. This guide is essential to those that want to understand the functions and usages of Facebook. Not only is the different aspects of Facebook explained in the chapter but it gives specific examples of how to incorporate Facebook into the school system. This guide also gives you the advantages of using Facebook within your class, school, or a business standpoint. It explains that every time someone views a page or ad Facebook tracks this information. From a standpoint of advertising Facebook is cost effective and gets the job done much faster and cheaper than regular advertisements on television, radio, and billboards. As a school leader this chapter explains all the benefits of using Facebook that definitely outweigh the cons. Dixon does a great job of pointing out the easy ways to use Facebook for your school. The chapter about email was second. The Dixon book was unlike any I had really ever read before; however I thought that it was very helpful when learning to use different types of social media. I really actually enjoyed the pictures because I learn from seeing other people and examples of things and so it was perfect. The first chapter that I looked at was the chapter titled “Email.” At the beginning of the chapter I was actually surprised that the book said most people didn’t use email efficiently. I thought that was interesting because to me, there really isn’t a whole lot to do on email and I would think everyone uses it the same. Dixon gives four steps in the emailing process, select all, star the important stuff, archive the rest, and review the stars. He also states that you should have at least two important folders, one for things you will read someday and the other for waiting for someone to respond. To be in education three tips about emailing are check it less frequently, set up filtering rules, and try and keep your email program closed. Lastly some advanced emailing tips are here have email groups, set up smart subjects, have a catch all account, and have a context based email address. I found these tips very useful and was happy to say that I actually already do some of them! Dixon really brings out some common sense things but they may be things that people overlook and really are quite helpful. Cell phones was the last chapter. As a teacher and just someone who is on the go a lot my cell phone is my go to for anything business or family related. After reading Dixon’s chapter on cell phones I could really appreciate what my actual cell phone could do for me if I had it all organized and actually new all the capabilities that it has to offer me! In the chapter Dixon starts off by talking about how people use cell phones and how we are more accessible now than we used to be because of them. With a cell phone you can really get a hold of anyone, anytime, anywhere. If your school or you personally have a Facebook page you can update this through your cell phone now, and you can also use your cell phone to collaborate with parents also. Some principles have started using text messages to let parents know different things about the school such as weather reports and school functions that are going on; such a quick and easy way to get a message to so many people in just a few clicks of a button. As a teacher or administrator you should give out your personal cell phone number to parents and put a personal approach on things with an email signature or business card for your school. If you don’t feel comfortable giving parents your personal cell phone number you can always set up a voicemail hotline or Skype or even K7 Net which is similar to Skype. Another effective tool for engaging your school community is text message marketing and even though a lot of schools don’t allow students to have cell phones in the classrooms a great way to get students engaged is through mobile polling. If the students use this mobile polling they can answer and ask questions and give their opinion while sitting at their desks and using their cell phones.
For the Collins book we reviewed chapters 4, 7, 9, and 10! Collins explains the development of American schooling in this chapter, chapter 4. This historical transformation of education and schooling in America is quite Interesting. With the beginning, Collins talks about schooling being the responsibility of parents where children learned the needs of their life from parents to live. This was an apprenticeship format of education where children learned trades from parents or relatives. Then their was a shift to state education under the movement of Horace Mann, which resulted in the American School system. “The American school system resulted from a chain of events that included: 1.) the invention of the printing press, 2.) the Reformation, 3.) the American Revolution, and 4.) the Industrial Revolution (p. 50).” The establishment of the universal schooling in America became difficult to change after experimenting with different structures and strategies. The ones that worked stuck and new structures and strategies had to fit within the structure that seems to work. The school system evolved to solve a set of problems a growing and urbanizing country. The problems and demands of the nation have now changed but the system of school remain the same. “By the 21 century, we have seen great technological and social changes that have yet to be reflected in the schools (P.62).” In this chapter, 7, Collins reflects on the vision of Horace Mann and that he saw education developing into a social cohesion. “This may be lost” because as awesome as the Internet and technology is to us as a society it major spread and grow is due to groups that interact through a common interests. Common interest group through religion or ideas well continue to develop curricula that addresses concerns they have that fit with raising their children. Because of social media that can create groups of common interest in short periods of time the cohesion that Mann vision will be what we may lose. We may also lose interaction with others as they will sit more in front of the computer isolated. On the other hand we may gain some things as well. Education will be more engaging for all and not just younger students. Computers and technology can be customized to fit the needs of individuals. More challenging for those that need it or adapted for those that need a different approach to meet their learning styles. In this chapter “What Does It All Mean?” chapter 9, it explains why students should use technology and what benefits it gives them and what the parents should be looking for and encouraging in their children with school and technology. This section stated that the emergences of technology based learning environments require parents along with teachers to pay attention to how and what children learn outside of school and the home. Not only can the parents and teachers raise awareness of the new technologies they can also begin to appreciate the range of new skills that kids develop when they get to start using these technologies in school and at home. The chapter also talks about how technology is a large threat to children of school age, but also one of the greatest opportunities that they will have to do what they want. Technology has become an economic engineer that students and parents can use to their advantage. Teachers are being pressured to change their traditional classrooms into ones that integrate technology so that they are not left behind when the students know more about the technology than them. There will still be parts of the traditional classrooms they will just be implemented in different ways, like math homework will still be math homework it will just be done online and scored immediately. The one thing that has school holding back is the funding or lack of it in schools across America.In this chapter, 10, it starts out talking about needing a new change and vision for education, this can be done through technology. In an economy like the one that we are in today we need economic success not only for individuals, but also for our country as a whole. This can be done through education involving technology. The gap between countries and what they have and don’t is only getting bigger, and not smaller. Education is moving outside of the schools walls while using these new forms of technology, but we need to focus on improving the schools not just getting the technology to them. One of the main goals for education reform is to rethink how we motivate our children to learn, and fortunately technology helps with this because students are more driven when using technology in the classroom. While rethinking how to get the students ready to learn and use technology to do this we also need to rethink what is actually taught content wise to them. In an age with many technological resources what is best to teach them and how? Is traditional the best content for students or new skills invoked rich with technology better? Whatever the answer these two are not usually looked at together by educators, it is mostly one or the other. Communication and math are very big in today’s competitive economy but is this the best route to take in education or should we stick with the traditional reading and writing? Careers and what we do in jobs are also rapidly changing, and our educational system in one way or another needs to keep up!
