I really like this text. The author has a way of writing that is very conversational. I find myself responding (not out loud of course) to some of his quirky comments. I particularly enjoy how detailed he is with his reasoning for why these resources are useful to classrooms. I've never really thought the way he is encouraging me to think. What better way to show students how to become critical readers of the Internet than to make them writers!
I've always thought of blogs as ways for people to rant about whatever crosses their mind. I'm finding through these readings that they can be much more than that. One particular blog, which is no longer up and running caught my eye because of the purpose behind it, to limit the amount of paper use within the classroom. Shelly Blake-Plock started her Teach Paperless Blog because she wanted to find a way to stop the use of paper within her classroom. Eventually she allowed other colleagues to become authors and together they created blogs that give other teachers creative ideas to avoid paper use within the classroom. So this is what I've been missing! I'm a little worried because I've noticed that blogging or bog surfing can become addictive as proven by the hour that I have been sitting here hopping from site to site.
Wikispaces on the other hand is a whole different battle. As I spoke about in class, I had a wiki a couple of years ago and was turned off by it because a student abused their privileges and put some really horrible material up. For all the good it did in helping my students collaborate, I had major clean up duty with a lot of parents and children when things went wrong. Additionally, students are able to create their own wikis that teachers have no control over, but when children create inappropriate wikis parents tend to blame the teacher because we are the ones that introduced the technology to them. I feel like you can't win for losing!
On the other hand, Richardson's mention of allowing students to do their own research projects and adding to Wikipedia information what they have learned I think is a valuable lesson. I think that it will teach students a level of respect for how information is formed while they monitor what happens to the information they add to the site. I'm always looking for ways to get critical feedback to my students about the work that they are doing and this would be an interesting way to test the waters.
I totally agree with your feelings on wikis. It makes me incredibly nervous to think that students (particularly the ever mature, excellent decision making, sixth grader) can add or remove content at will. If things were to "go wrong" at my school, I can imagine the fallout would also be huge. I don't like the idea of having to "clean up" such disasters which ultimately leads to us educators defending our classroom practices. Ugh...no rest for the weary....damned if we do and damned if we don't.
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