Sunday, July 1, 2007

Response Blog #2

After reading Richardson's book chapters 4-6 I was very excited to see read the chapter on "RSS: The New Killer App for Educators".
I found the syndication of the all of the material very useful. Having the ability to go to one place in order to check updates on all of the sites that you use to search for ideas, innovations, lesson ideas, etc is awesome.
It will certainly cut my time looking through the sites I use and make me more productive. I plan on setting one up very soon and seeing how help it can be. I am very interested to see if anyone has used this yet and if so how well did it work for you?

I believe that wikipedia has been the most important Internet site in the last 10 years. I frequently use it and always encouraged my students to do the same for one main reason; almost any idea/topic can be found on the site from the most obscure to the most well known. Like all Internet information you have to take it with a grain of salt because you have to check your sources and make sure that what you are reading is fact not opinion. If students use it correctly, they also learn how to check their sources and practice a form of good journalism. It is also almost a form of blogging since you can constantly edit and change things which make it interactive and very user-friendly which everyone loves. Here is a wikipedia site that used to explain to my students the benefits of using wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects_-_instructions_for_teachers_and_lecturers

5 comments:

Waterbridge said...

Jeremy, I also like Wikipedia, and I agree that it is a great way to teach students to check their sources and read information with a critical eye.

Sue said...

I will use the wikipedia site for myself. I am just getting my arms around this whole idea. I had heard of wikipedia before, but had no idea that it was a collaborative resource. I'm curious to read this info you gave use the link for. Thanks!

megfritzphd said...

Jeremy,
Thanks for mentioning that we can use wikipedia as a resource for information. We really didn't discuss that in class. We focused more on using it as a publishing tool for ourselves and our students.

megfritzphd said...

Another thought....will you have your students work in a collaborative class wikipage???

jmellon said...

I do believe that a long-term goal is to have my students work in a collaborative class wikipage. I am still figuring out the logistics of how I can get them to do will accomplishing our other course goals.