Week One: Thoughts to Ponder

Stephen Downes Article
Before reading this article by Stephen Downes about educational blogging, I had never really thought about using a blog for educational purposes. Though I am still in the early stages of learning about blogs, it seems to me that we have not met the potential for using blogs in the classroom, as stated by Downes. I figure this is due in part to the lack of knowledge and exposure to blogs by the teacher. It is difficult to incorporate any type of technology into the classroom when you are not proficient with the technology yourself. Using a blog as we do for this class is a great way to bring this type of technology into the classroom. With enrollment for online high schools on the rise, blogging would function well in this setting as well. I also think creating a class blog in place of a class web site might be easier for some to accomplish while still serving the same purposes of a web site. The added benefit of using a class blog would be the listing of postings in chronological order and the archiving of past posts for easy retrieval. This would make identifying new content on the blog very easy for both students and parents.

Alan November Article
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Alan November's article, and I found each of the six areas he addressed in reference to the framework for the new culture to be very important. The one that jumped out at me the most was the first one: 'If it's on the Internet, is it true?' I attended the Library Expo in Plano this October, and the keynote speaker, David Warlick, addressed this very idea. The example he used involved an online article titled, " The Day the Dream Died: When Martin Luther King, Jr. was Shot"--or something similar to that. Like November, the point Warlick made is to stress the importance of working backwards to determine the authors of the articles and information we find on the Internet. In this instance, the MLK, Jr. article was actually linked to a white supremacy group, which would definitely impact the nature of the article. It is so important to teach students how to evaluate the content found on the Web and how to work back to determine the authors or supporting organizations of the articles that are accessible through the Internet.