Technology for Classrooms-Blogs Podcasts & Wikis
Student Blogs and More Simple Classroom Technology Integration Tips
Aug 25, 2009
Classroom technology integration has become a critical part of the curriculum. Many students dislike writing and avoid it at all costs. But these same students go to their computers and create social networking sites, blogs, and videos for You Tube. They collaborate with other online users in a variety of media. Any teacher who doesn’t recognize the value of this is missing a huge opportunity to improve their instruction.
Classroom Technology Integration Tips
People have an innate need to create. And who wants to create or write something if it’s not going to be published?
Classroom technology – in the right instructional hands – can give students a culturally relevant way to publish their own writing, including text, audio, video, and multi-media. It is differentiated, it is immediate, and it provides a forum for feedback as readers view the content and comment.
Much Classroom Technology is Free
Teachers will be glad to discover that publishing to the web can cost absolutely nothing. Without spending a cent, a student’s work can be uploaded and displayed in a matter of minutes. The work will look as professional as content on any commercial site.
Safety Issues Related to Classroom Technology Integration and Student Blogs
By prefacing their instruction with a few guidelines, teachers can ensure that publishing to the web will be perfectly safe . In any kind of publishing to the web, students should never include their last names or immediate locations. They should also never publish a photo with a caption that includes their name.
With each type of technology, teachers and students can decide whether to make the content open for internet users or to invite only friends and family. Most teachers opt for restricted access to their students’ work.
Student Blogs in Classroom Technology
The word blog is short for "web log." Basically, a blog is a journal or a diary, but instead of keeping it locked up on the nightstand, writers publish blogs online for the world to see, and allow readers to write comments in them.
People use blogs for reasons other than keeping a journal, though. Some keep track of things that are interesting to them; some write their own news stories; some use blogs to publish fiction or poetry. For as many reasons people have found to write and publish, there are that many types of blogs.
Education Podcast in Classroom Technology
Podcast is a distortion of the word “broadcast”. It used to be that only corporations, radio stations, and TV studios had the resources to create a broadcast. The farther they wanted to cast their message, the more power was required for the transmitter, and that meant more money was involved, not to mention the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Now, anyone can create an audio or video file and “broadcast” it on the world wide web simply by uploading it. Because iPods were one of the first portable devices to play these audio or video files, the broadcasts came to be known as podcasts.
Educational Wikis in Classroom Technology
Most people have heard of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Seriously, anyone with access to the web can log in, create an entry, or edit someone else’s entry.
In education, a wiki is most commonly used to create a collaborative website. A wiki is any web site that allows multiple users, viewers, or members to add or change content. Basically, wikispaces are the easiest, most non-technical way of designing a website.
Teachers wanting more information on incorporating these forms of technology into their classrooms can check out related articles on uploading video podcasts, and starting student blogs , podcasts, or wikis.
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