Chapters 3,5,7

Chapter 3

If you put your name on your work, you should be aware of the consequences (Richardson 47). Posting publicly is something that one should take seriously. Richardson calls it adding to your “online portfolio”. As a teacher, it would be good to think of posting on the internet as a means of making your own portfolio that is visible to everyone.

Richardson tells us that 80% of all homes can connect to the internet. This is amazing. However, it brings up the notion that it is important to consider how many kids are able to access the internet from their homes. Of the 80% that Richardson mentions, 99% some poor communities may contribute to the 20% who cannot access the internet.

Richardson says he believes it is unreasonable to grade every post a student makes. However, he does believe some sort of assessment is in order. I agree with him. If a teacher treats each post as if it were a formal paper, the students may begin to tighten up and show a lack of creativity. Weblogs, to me, are a great tool for sparking conversation and creativity—not for writing formal papers. As Richardson suggests, teachers should merely grade the posts on how much effort the students put into them.

Chapter 5

RSS feeds would be great for a teacher to learn about new research in education. They could learn about new instructional strategies, or new ways in which to motivate students. I wonder about students using RSS feeds for a high school English class, though. Unlike science, there is not a great deal of ongoing, cutting-edge research about books. As a result, I question the benefit of RSS feeds for high school English students.

If teachers relied heavily on the internet for instruction, they could benefit from using RSS feeds. It would take a teacher a long time to search for each student’s weblog—especially if they were scattered throughout the internet.


Chapter 7

Richardson talks about how some of the content on Flickr is questionable. This could make preparing to use the tool completely useless. Would many schools already have the website blocked? If they did, would it be beneficial to students to not see the material? Would it be more beneficial for students to see the questionable content, yet be able to use the technological tool?

With its great pictures, and the availability of the annotation tool, Flickr could be a great asset for teachers to reach visual learners. In English class, a student is expected to learn via their verbal skills. However, if a teacher could integrate the readings with visual content from Flickr, many students would benefit from it.