Digital Post F

In this chapter, the first section that caught my attention was 'Using Electronic Communication in Your Teaching'. I completely agree with them stating that it would help students if teachers used blogs to interact with students. I would personally use it in a higher level class, like a 9th through 12th grade classroom - maybe 7th or 8th grade classroom too. Some students learn different ways and teaching doesn't have to end once the bell rings. I think if we did use blogs to communicate with students once school is over, it gives students more of a connection with the teacher and the students can go back and look back at the lesson in case they didn't understand or if they missed a day of school. Or ask a question if they are confused about something. I'm all for using blogs to help students learn better!

Credit to geralt on Pixabay

The next section I read that really got my attention was the section called 'Building Learning Communities'. This section is similiar to the one I just spoke about, but it goes on explaining that students want to express opinions and make sure that they're heard, so making a blog for students and teachers to comment on, seems to be a great idea! And blogs don't have to be for just high school classrooms, it can also be used in the younger classrooms. You can state "I wonder questions" which are questions that get kids thinking and they can ask peers or their family to help them answer and that gets a collaborative conversation going.

The last section is 'Wikis as a Collaborative Learning Strategy'. Wikis are more of a collaborative project that could be more useful in a higher level classroom. For example, if I were a teacher giving an assignment to a group of students, I would use a Wiki for the assignment vs a blog. And I would do this because in a Wiki, the whole group can edit and comment on each page and in a blog, you can not. There are many different Wikis and the purposes for them are very useful in school. You can work together with your group without being face to face. In my opinion, Wikis are more meaningful than a blog only because you can work with your peers on the same project to get it done. 

Wordle

Resources: 

• Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.