Digital Text

While, through the experience of practicum, a lot of information covered in this chapter of Wes Fryer I already knew, I learned a lot through what he had to say, especially on the discussion of blog vs. wiki. We as practicum students have had a chance to work with both blog and wiki, I know that personally, I never had a chance to work with them before practicum, in the classroom. My favorite part of what Wes Fryer was saying, is that blogs are more like newspaper, they compile a bunch of information into simple, easy to read posts, that the original poster can edit, and is timestamped and shown in chronological order, while a wiki is more like an encyclopedia, with multiple pages and changes to the pages are archived. One of the suggestions that Wes Fryer makes that I really agree with is minimal clicking, students are going to get confused if they are required to click a bunch of different links and have to find multiple different pages, so making all their information easy and accessible will make the blog and wiki experience in the classroom run a lot smoother.

The first link that I explored was Tumblr, which is a free blogging site that allows for plenty of customization and freedom to post whatever you please. While this site is easy to navigate and all it's features are free, there is room for distraction if using it in the classroom and hardly anything is blocked or regularly looked at for inappropriate content. There are pros to it though, as tagging is an available feature and the customization feature might be desirable feature to more visual learners who want to be able to control how the resource they're using looks like. Tumblr is supposed to function as more of a personal blogging site, but with the correct monitoring and instruction could easily be fit into the classroom.

The second link I explored was EduBlogs, which is also a free blogging site, that unlike Tumblr is geared completely towards educators and students. When you first get to the home page, it asks you whether you are a student or a teacher, so this website could easily be integrated into the classroom. Like Tumblr, this site offers many different options and allows for outreach to many other different bloggers, but all those fellow bloggers would be fellow teacher or other students from different schools. One of my favorite things about EduBlogs, is that right on the front page if gives you plenty of suggestions on how to use the site and make it valuable in your classroom, with options for student blogging, integration of video, or class discussion, and the fact that it's completely geared towards schools, makes it ideal for a classroom setting.

The final link that I explored was Class Blogmeister, which differs from both Tumblr and EduBlogs. This website is a compilation of different resources put out by other teachers. There is a plethora of different links and resources that are available on Class Blogmeister that it would be quite easy to find resources to use in the classroom. The biggest downside to this website is that it seems geared mostly towards teachers, and might be hard to be interactive with your students on, which would be something that as a teacher, I would be interested in doing.