As a current technology specialist, it is embarrassing to admit that this blog is truly my first blog experience. As a first timer I don’t feel that I have a great platform for sharing a strong opinion of the use of web 2.0 tools in school. I can piggy back on the ideas of others at the moment, but I am solely basing my opinion on what I have been told and my brief exposure to these tools.
I do feel that much like the introduction of the internet to classrooms there are great possibilities, but there are also tremendous dangers. I think that there is great value in teaching our students to share their intellectual thoughts with others and to reconsider their thoughts based on the comments of others. This is a simple concept that has been taught for years in classrooms. The idea of web 2.0 tools and more specifically a blog is that students are reaching beyond the confines of their traditional classroom and tapping into the ideas of the world. The world…that is almost too hard to truly take in. I am not a parent myself, but I really don’t have a hard time understanding parents trepidations when it comes to allowing a child to share not only their thoughts, but possibly an ongoing conversation with “someone out there”.
I guess for me, I am still really struggling with pushing beyond the possible dangers and allowing elementary aged students to use a public web 2.0 tool. I do think that the concept of using a blog is a wonderful tool and could really bring a grade level or school closer together if they are all actively participating in a blog together, but I think I am more comfortable with a blog on a school tool that is on an internal network and password protected to those within the school system. I have seen too many teachers use the internet very poorly with students regardless of reminders about pre-checking websites and monitoring the students that the idea of actually letting students interact directly on a completely public site is fairly terrifying to me. The tech geek in me is so intrigued by blogs, and I can’t wait to hear other people’s ideas on possible reasons to use a blog in the classroom, because for me I am still very undecided.
1 response so far ↓
1
timstahmer
// Oct 24, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Isn’t “the world” something of a relative term? For an eight year old, talking to someone in another county would be a big experience.
I’ve seen examples of teachers setting up a blog for their students to communicate with students in another class in another school. The fact that they were writing for an audience they had never met was enough to encourage most of the students to improve their writing. The comments, of course, were moderated and students only wrote for the blog when being supervised by an adult (the teacher, an IA, or volunteer parents).
The point is that there are ways to give kids an authentic experience in a safe environment.
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