Ok, I have played around and spent some time familiarising myself with these tools and I must say that I do see them as very valuable tools to use for personal and whole class learning.
Blogs
I set up my own blog without any problems and quickly started playing around with the functions and settings to make it personal! I found that the set-up of the blog and the way the blog interface is designed is very user friendly. I think that students would be able to use this interface quite easily if they were given a few introductory sessions and were able to play around with the interface. The most daunting thing about using the blog is that it is really a reflective journal for you to write down your thoughts. Normally this is reserved for private viewing as opposed to this blog where many people are able to scrutinize your grammar, spelling and general thoughts. I believe that in order for students to use blogs effectively the learning manager would need to provide students with support and information about the types of things to put in their blog. Their must be some type of framework or guiding questions in order for students to use higher order thinking when they are reflecting on their learning. Reflection is probably the number one thing that I would use this blog for in my classroom. Reflecting on learning is one of the most important parts of the learning and unfortunately it is often the thing that gets cut short as the bell rings. Students would be able to jot down their reflections using text, images, videos or other tools that they can embed in their blog. This makes the reflecting very personal to each student and doesn't limit them to pen and paper!!
Wikis
I created a wiki for my pretend year 5 class who have investigated rain forests and are now discussing the impact and influence that different stakeholders have on the rain forest. Having created this page and added text, sub-pages, videos and images I am impressed again with the ease of setting it up and interacting with the material. I especially like the fact that the learning manager can monitor the content and can restrict content with passwords, ensuring that the students have privacy within the wiki. It is important to set up a safe environment for students to work in as the internet can be a dangerous place for young children, but the password protection provides peace of mind for the learning manager and parents. I have created my pretend grade 5 wiki with the intent that groups would interact with each other and share information on their page. The front page gives an introduction to the project and encourages students to find their group (animals, homeowners etc.). On these pages I would put an activity that stirs up conversations and guides students to make valuable contributions. For example on the animal page students are asked to consider how the rain forest impacts the animals that live there. This way students are researching, communicating with each other and developing a shared understanding. I think that when using wikis in the classroom it is important to give students guidance about the content that they should upload and discuss to ensure that students are learning and using higher order thinking skills.
You will find my wiki here https://nikitabarnett.wikispaces.com/
Websites
Following my rain forest theme I created a website using weebly to make an information website about rain forests and the impact that different stakeholders have. I really like the way that you can drag different features onto the page and then edit them to put in your content. I really enjoyed playing around with the different functions and int he end thought that simple was best! I created different pages and if I was actually designing this for a class I would use this as a base for my students research. I would put up suitable websites for them to explore, word documents such as checklists, tips for internet searching or templates for them to display their work. As a learning manager I don't think that the goal is to monitor and restrict students access to the internet but I do think that it is helpful to have a place to start that is safe and reliable. Creating your own website means that you can monitor the content and guide students to reliable websites on the internet. I would be really interested to learn how I could make the website more interactive so that younger students could access the website using an interactive whiteboard and really interact with the content.
Here is my website http://year5rainforestproject.weebly.com/
Thanks for reading
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