Chapter 1 Read/Write Web
Chapter 1 wasn’t as boring as I had anticipated. However, I’m one of those people who is being dragged into learning technology kicking and screaming. I like the old way of using paper, and for my purposes the old ways work. The “extraordinary changes” this chapter talks about are changes I don’t yet see as extraordinary. Sharing, making connections, forming groups makes our lives much more visible to other people, and I’m not comfortable with that.
I realize the necessity of understanding and using the advances in technology. My students are much more technology savvy than I am, and much more open to new technologies. However, being teenagers, they still need guidance, and so I know it’s important to keep up with these changes, if for no other reasons to help keep students safe while using the Web. And so, I’m learning.
Chapter 2 Weblogs
The positive impact that blogs can have on students sounds great on paper, but I question how well in works in practice. The positive aspect of blogs listed in this chapter such as promoting critical and analytical thinking, promoting creative, intuitive and analogical thinking, and increasing exposure to quality information, would apply to more advanced level students and those who are interested in blogs as an educational tool, but as this chapter says ““ teenagers use these sites more as social tools than learning tools, and their behavior is sometimes reckless.” (pg. 20). The author claims that blogs will create a genre of “connective writing” that “forces those who do it to read carefully and critically”. (pg.28). Sure, in a perfect world !
The Online Filing Cabinet piqued my interest. I very much like the idea of having all student’s work organized in one place for them to be reflective and to see their own growth and how much they’ve learned over the years. However, I’m not sure I understand the value of sharing it with everyone. The author says that a blog gives them an opportunity to write down what they may be to shy to speak in class. Personally, I don’t see this happening. Shy students are reluctant to share their thoughts in any genre, not just speaking in class. The blog is meant to be open to everyone, and I don’t see shy students as suddenly overcoming that to post openly on a blog.
Chapter 3 Weblogs
For those who are fully on board with using classroom blogs, this is a terrific chapter in that it fully explains each step of creating and using blogs from start to end. In addition it gives many links and examples. As a “how to” lesson it’s excellent.
For some subjects/classes, I imagine blogs could be very useful. However, I personally would rather have face-to-face discussions rather than blogging. Because sign language is manual/visual, I cannot currently think of how to use a classroom blog with my students. After reading this chapter, I asked my students if they thought it would be useful for us, and the reply was an overwhelming “no”. We’ll see. I imagine if I can be creative, we can come up with something beneficial for ASL.
Chapter 4 Wikis
I have always considered Wikipedia an unreliable source and caution my students to back up any information on it with another source. This chapter has led me to keeping a more open mind about it, although I’m still not totally trusting of it. That author cites a study that was conducted with 13 errors posted on Wikipedia and says this is “pretty amazing” that they were found and corrected “within a couple of hours”. “Within a couple of hours” isn’t very good for the person who is relying on that information in the time span that corrections are being located and fixed.
Even after reading this chapter, I am skeptical of wikis in general. The chapter makes it sound like everyone contributing to the wiki is knowledgeable and has the best intentions for “creating truth”. I’m just not so sure. I like the old days when you opened an encyclopedia and knew that the information was factual because is was written by true experts. Today, many people believe themselves to be experts on a topic, but in reality, they’re not. I worry that students will be mislead by posts done by such people.
Chapter 5 – RSS
This I like. Kind of. What I like is that it seems simple to access up-to-date information from a huge variety of sources. It’s advantage is that it can cut down on time searching through useless information. Subscribing via RSS to newspapers, magazines, etc. is extremely useful and a cost saver over subscriptions.
What I don’t like is that there may be too much information and much time will be wasted sorting through it all. Having an RSS feed on a specific search keyword could get overwhelming with hits. It has potential to be time consuming in reading through RSS feeds. If there are as the authors says “hundreds . . . er . . . dozens . . . um. . . a few RSS feeds in your aggregator”, checking those feeds would be difficult.
I’m going to work on using RSS feeds for current event discussion/ debates that we sign in class. In the advanced classes, we have signed discussions/debates once a week. Students sometimes are unprepared for the discussions because they don’t know where to get information. The RSS could work very well for us.
Chapter 6 – The Social Web
Tweeting is meant to make people feel “more a part of the larger conversation, more a part of the community”. I’m not understanding that sense of community. I think it’s sad that we feel connected to people we don’t know, have never met and never seen just because we have read their Tweet. Also, many people have gotten in trouble with their tweets because they “connect” before they think. We’re becoming a society of people who think that our opinions are critical to express and everyone wants to know what we think.
Twitter as an educational tool is not for me. Edmodo is. This term each of my classes has set up an Edmodo account and so far it’s been very useful for students to submit both research projects and videos of themselves signing. Being able to give feedback in the “reply” box, is invaluable because students can review their work with my comments directly in front of them.
I’m intrigued by Diigo as a way to collaborate with colleagues.
Chapter 7 – Fun with Flickr
For our literature unit, I like to use goofy pictures to show students and ask them to come up with a short story about what is happening in the picture, then sign it to the class or a partner. It’s meant to be spontaneous and fun. Often students want to share their stories, but there isn’t enough time for everyone to sign their story. I’m assuming that Flickr will be useful in that they can view a variety of picture and independently sign their story, then upload it to a Flickr account and we can view/interpret them in class.
Because ASL as a credited class is a recent concept, most parents don’t know what is going on with their child in our classes. Flickr would be a great way to share with parents videos of students’ work. We have in the past posted to Youtube, but I’d prefer to keep them more private.
Chapter 8 – Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, and Live Streaming.
This is the most useful part of technology for ASL users. My SMART goal this year is to FLIP my classroom. Screencasting is an excellent way for me to do that. We can create a signed video, or stream one from an ASL website or from our videotext. Students will be able to voice record what they see on the video, and compare it to the actual interpretation. If the videos are posted, they’ll be able to watch it as many times as necessary.
I’ll need to think this out more carefully, but I can see this working for my classes.
The author states that “publishing to an audience can be a great motivator for students”. (pg. 129) We use video recorders or the WebCams for every Unit, and my experience is that students get very shy in front of the camera. Many of them freeze when the camera is turned on, so this will take the proverbial baby steps to get them comfortable filming themselves.
Chapter 10 – What It All Means
Having been in education for decades, I’ve seen many trends come and go and so I wonder how many of the tools presented in this book will actually bear up in the future. Although it’s all well meaning, people connecting and communicating behind computer screens, can easily result in lack of social skills. The concepts of computer networking are great, but I would like to see it being used in conjunction with face-to-face collaborations and with an understanding that not every thought we have is meant to be shared with the world. Some things belong on paper, in folders and in wastebaskets, and not shared. Also, I hate to see the art of reading for pleasure discarded. The authors says “reading is becoming a more active undertaking, no longer neatly compartmentalized in books and handouts.” (pg. 152) Why not? Why not read something for simple enjoyment, internalize it and let it stay there?
Overall Book Review
This book presents an overview approach to using Web 2.0 in the classroom, and I like that each chapter is dedicated to the synopsis of a different tool and how it can be used in a classroom. The book is an excellent guide because there are so many links and examples. And, importantly, it is written in laymen’s terms without making me feel like a dummy. However, Richardson makes it seem so easy to learn and use. For some of us (me), who didn’t grow up with technology, learning it now is a real challenge.
The trend in technology, personal, educational, or otherwise, is to create collaboration, connections and “shared workspace”. I’m all for collaborating but think it’s necessary to start small in order to manage and assimilate all the information in a useful way. This can be done only by using each tool and observing the effects of them long-term. If we are to use the ideas/tools presented in this book with our students, we must learn to use them ourselves first. This of course takes time, and like most everyone else, time is a commodity. Additionally, for me it means buying into the idea that collaborating through technology is better than collaborating face-to-face. This is a good choice of books for this class and for computer illiterates such as myself.
