This is the book that inspired me to start this blog. Basically, the author suggests that teachers almost need to have blogs to vent and share their ideas and views about teaching, in order to connect with other teachers and have feedback, as well as just having a blog in order to familiarize oneself with the technology in order to understand how to use it in the classroom. In a discussion I was having with a classmate, we were talking about how our professors are so gung-ho about using technology in the classroom, though most don't seem to have a great grasp of it themselves. (Don't get me started on PowerPoint presentations, that's another post!) We concluded that if we were teaching students that using new technology leads to greater literacy and that using it is cool and new and exciting, we need to actually use the technology ourselves. So, a blog was born!
More to the point: Warlick discusses various ways that blogs and wikis can be used in the classroom, and provides a whole lot of instruction about how to start a blog, how to start a wiki, how to post, et cetera. Which is fabulous for teachers who have no working knowledge of the classroom, though it falls somewhat flat for those of us who already knew how to do basic blogging functions. I would have liked to see a little more by way of "new" uses for a blog, and a lot more in terms of actual classroom applications- like what projects are best done blogging, and what new things they can explore with wikis. Don't get me wrong, it does offer ideas, but just extremely basic ones.
Ironically, the graphics in the text are incredibly outdated in terms of the style in which they are done, and though it was written only 3 years ago, it doesn't account for so many of the technologies- blog and otherwise- that are available to teachers now. The problem I'm finding with all of the technology books that I'm reading now is the simple fact that most of them are outdated practically upon being published.
The book did offer me one major idea that I intend to try out: the idea of a podcast. The only issue is that it detracts from the written elements of blogging, however, for journal entries about books children are reading, some of them may enjoy an option that allows them to verbalize and record thoughts to be used for a paper later, rather than writing. It might provide an interesting "hook" for getting students interested in journaling.
For me, blogging for students is about allowing them 'personal property.' I always loved having my own writing journal, not handing in one sheet of paper per entry, but having a real notebook to keep all of my thoughts in. Something about that physical "property" really held my interest. I feel as though blogs do the same thing for students now: it's a chunk of the Internet that is now theirs. Not to mention, the public access forces them to more carefully consider what they write, since their classmates or parents can easily see the work that they are doing.
Basically, while it's a simplistic (but necessary) book for teachers with little or no background in computers, it did make me start thinking of applications for blogging, and how to use it in my own research into teaching as well as in the classroom. This blog is intended to be an experiment for different web-based teaching applications, but also a place for me to hold all of my thoughts on student teaching experiences and also on books and research that I find myself studying outside of the classroom.
More on Warlick here.
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