As an educator I have been sucked into the belief that Wikipedia is bad! The notion that students shouldn't use it for research has been engrained in me from my days in college. I remember a particular required research class that I had to take back in my undergraduate days in college. The professor lectured us for two (painfully long) hours about how unreliable wikis are and how they should not be used by students or teachers as a reliable source of information. That professor and her message stayed with me for the remainder of my undergraduate years. Her message was stern, yet I never seemed to question it. What was so bad about Wikis? Now, here I am several years later, doing graduate work, and being encouraged to use and create Wikis in my elementary school classroom. My how times have changed.

In his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful tools for the classroom, Will Richardson discusses the education benefits of using wikis in the classroom. Essentially, a Wiki is a website that anyone can edit. A user can add information on a topic that is not already listed, or add information to an already existing entry. Sure this is a cool tool, but it's affordance as an educational tool in the classroom has baffled me for some time now.

After looking at different web pages and examples of wikis in the classroom, I am finally able to see how beneficial they can be to my students. I think Will Richardson said it best:

"In using wikis, students are not only learning how to publish content; they are also learning how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, negotiating with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance and more. In essence, students begin to teach each other."

The following sites have offered some great ideas for using wikis in my classroom. Although I haven't used wikis in my classroom as of yet, I do have some ideas in the works for next year.

The following websites offer some useful suggestions for implementing wikis in the classroom.

http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/wikiideas1.cfm

http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/Classroom+Wikis

5 Strategies for Using Wikis in the Classroom

50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative Classroom

Classroom 2.0

Blogging on Blogs

I've finally made it to the other side....blogging. Blogging was never something that I would have ever thought I would be doing. It always seemed like the thing 'those people' were doing. Now I'm faced with the challenge of not only becoming a blogger myself, but also somehow integrating it into my classroom. The challenge seems grand, but not unattainable.

I'm still at odds with the way in which I will begin to implement blogs in my classroom. After looking at other individual and educational blogs, I can see the value in blogging. I'm just trying to figure out how to realistically implement and maintain a blog in my fourth grade classroom.

After spending some quality time with Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts, I've decided that I will give blogging some long over due attention. Although I consider myself pretty current with new technologies, Web 2.0 tools are extremely new to me. One of the most important things I got from Richardson's discussion on weblogs was a quote that continues to resonate with me.

"How can a teacher expect her students to blog (or use any other tool, strategy, or technique) if she doesn't use it herself, exploring the impact it has on her thinking, writing, research, and creativity?"

With that being said, I plan to continue to explore blogs and ways to implement them in my classroom. Hopefully, I will find my own niche in blogging.