Blogs in Education

When I did a search for "educational blogs," I found that the three search engines I used were very similar in their results. I used msn, google, and yahoo. All three produced many of the same websites, however the sites weren't listed in the exact same order. I think that yahoo and google were more similar than msn, however they all resulted similarly.

After exploring a few of the links from my search, I found that blogs (K-12) come in helpful for teachers to share with other teachers their ideas and new technology that they have found innovative in the classroom. Another way that these blogs are being used is to share pod casts; ones that can be shown in the classroom, or even just for the educator's purpose. Lastly, I found it interesting as well as a good idea that blogs are being used to tell inspirational stories that occur in the classroom, and encourage teachers and students everywhere. Without these blogs, such worth-telling, uplifting stories would not be shared, when really they should.

I found that RSS readers provide news updates from a website in a simple form for your computer, and one reads these files in a program, which is a aggregator. An aggregator collects news from various websites and provides it in a simple form. These are both quite similar, and I could see myself using both to help cut-down time when searching for something specific on the web. When I am in my classroom, I think by using both the aggregators and RSS readers, it will help me better sort through information, and find the best sites for what I may be looking for at a given time. It could also benefit my students when they are learning, researching, or working on a project because it would cut down search time, and allow them to find good resources.

I think that by blogging and using RSS readers in K-12 classrooms could impact both the teachers and students. For the students, these blogs and RSS readers can create a whole new way of learning, a way that is innovative and efficient. For the teachers, using blogs and readers can create a whole new way of teaching, and gathering information efficiently. Efficient is one of the main impacts I feel blogging and using readers may have on education, because it can gather specific information from all around very quickly, and allows sharing of information, ideas, thoughts, and of course new and old information.

With blogging and using readers, there comes pros and cons. Cons of these in education are that so many valuable books that provide excellent and reliable information, get ignored. Libraries are today, still a great resource, and these new technologies can hurt these places. Another con is that blogging and using readers requires a computer, and there are many families in the U.S. that do not have much access to a computer, or it is very inconvenient. On another note, some pros to using blogs and readers in education are that new information, that may not otherwise be shared, now becomes available. Lastly, blogs and readers cut search time and make education (teaching and learning) way more efficient in the classroom.

Webquest

For my webquest, I would like to make the subject about astronomy. More specifically, I would like to focus on the different planets and the solar system in general. I think I could do a lot with this subject, and I am very interested in it as well.