Journal Post #8

Chapter 8-Communicating and Networking with Websites, Blogs, Wikis, and More

Focus Question #4 How can teachers use wikis to promote collaborative learning?

Wiki’s create a great collaborative and interactive activity for students. Wiki’s also give technology a meaningful integration into the classroom, allow students and colleagues to interact, allow creative written expression and allows for feedback. Students are able to work together with wikis which allows for a collaborative learning environment. This has students working in a more socially as well.

Students can work off of others to successfully build portions of the wiki since a wiki is developed by multiple computer users.

Tech Tool 8.2 Posting and Publishing With Digital Image Scanners

I found this tech tool very exciting. It is a device in which hand written or drawn items can be scanned onto a digital format. This is especially useful for classrooms that want to express work on classroom media sources such as class websites or wikis. This is a great idea to create a portfolio for classwork done both by hand and through technology. We have something very similar out the YMCA that we use during our summer programs when we are doing our educational component. We do not have access to multiple computers or computer labs so we often scan the works so that we can save them for our camp portfolio.

Summary

This chapter is a great resource chapter. It discusses how many different technologies can be integrated into the classroom to explore meaningful learning experiences in creative was to keep the kids engaged. I am a huge fan of emailing to parents to assure that they are receiving information promptly. With children emails work, but I feel that it would be most successful with older children. Blogs can be used for many different things. Blogs are good because it is an open resource for children to explore for learning efficiencies. Active learning blogs are also a great tool. I am excited to learn how to create a wiki in this class. I feel that it would be a great tool to add within some of my current extension programs.

Resources:
Franklin, T., Duran, M. & Kariuki, M. (2001). Mentoring Overcomes Barriers to Technology Integration. In J. Price et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2001 (pp. 848-849). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Maloy, R. W., Verock-O, R. E., Edwards, S. A., & Woolf, B. P. (2010). Transforming learning with new technologies. Allyn & Bacon.