Reflection 2

I like the idea of using a wiki to post information about books or to share writing that students have done in school. The librarian at my school and I are actually doing something with my community of students. We are having them read some new books that we have in the library from the ORCA series. They are lower level texts that focus mainly on plot and action without all the fluff. The students are reading these and then we are going to co-teach a lesson on how to write a review of the book and how to use the wiki to post the information for other poeple to read about. This is actually going to be really helpful for my Young Adult Literature class that I am taking where we are reading and giving our opinion about the books. This way we get student feedback and we even get to teach them about a new type of technology that they can use to publish their ideas. Right now the students are just reading the books and then in January they will begin working on the reviews. I am excited to see how this turns out.

Impressions of Wikis

I think this is a really great idea. I am really excited about all the new technology I am learning. I like that with a wiki you can see everything all at once when people post. You don't have to click on the comments in order to see what people say. I am doing a Young Adult Literature class where we are reading novels and posting our comments about the books to a wiki. Then all participants can go on and look at what everyone has said about their books. I never really knew what Wikipedia really was. I guess a site like that could be beneficial, but I think about all the times my students have asked me to use information from that to do research and it makes me cringe to think that basically anyone can post information on the site. I think we really need to educate our students about finding appropriate sources and Wikipedia probably isn't a good one to choose for our kind of research. I think if students are looking for social perceptions about differnt people or concepts then that might be a time to use Wikipedia. I was thinking I might try to use a wiki in my classroom later in the year. I would like to have kids create summaries and comments about their books. Kind of like an online booktalk to help other kids find interesting books to read for Literature Circles. I also could see using a wiki to publish writing pieces or poems.

Video Sharing

I thought the first site (Next Vista) was interesting, but I noticed there wasn't much for ELA. There was a lot for Math though. I think the idea of this site is good, they just need more on it. I like the idea of it being a site where it is regulated for content. I liked the Teacher Tube too. I thought that it might be interesting to poke around in there for video clips to explain concepts. For example, I was thinking of Literature Circles. I have a video I made that I use with my students, but it would be cool to show them a video of someone else doing one. This way they can see that other kids do them (as well as adults on their own time). I thought that all the sites were pretty user friendly. You just type in a search and whatever is relevant comes up. I think this format is easy for students to use too. I worry about the sites like You Tube and Clip Blast where things are not regulated. It is kind of scary how much our kids are exposed to through the internet. I also worry about posting videos with students and having them accidently give out personal information where predators could contact them. I think it is also important for teachers to watch a clip thoroughly before showing it to students. You never know whether the content is accurate or appropriate unless you watch the complete clip. :)

Reflection on Blogging

Okay....so I am really excited about this whole idea of blogging. It has so many possibilities for the classroom. I think this summer I would like to see how I can use blogs in my classroom with reading and writing. I think I need some time to kind of digest all this information and then set everything up the way I want. I think it would be a great way to publish student work. For example, we did a writing project in the beginning of the year and I would have loved to have been able to put them on a blog so that students could read and comment on each other's work. I have seen that a lot of teachers are using them for poetry, so maybe I'll try to get my feet wet by doing something with that this year. I can also see that kids would think the whole idea of blogging is cool. It would probably be a great motivator because students usually like anything that they can do on the computer. This makes me wish I had computers in my room all the time!

Great Blog

I read a blog today about the book The Secret Life of Bees. It looked like it was a blog that incorporated student feedback about the book. It looked like the different posts were assignments that the students had to do based on their reading. For each chapter they had to create a summary or talk about the highlights, discuss the use of symbols, and create some artwork depicting events or themes in the novel. There was even a parent blog that I thought was great. It was called The Secret Life of Bees Parent Blog. I think the idea is that parents can read the same novel and comment on the book as well. What a great way to get parents invovled in great discussions about books with their kids.