Although there may be many safety concerns associated with weblogs, teachers must keep in mind that through the use of blogging, students are provided with the opportunity to communicate with peers outside of the classroom walls. As is the case with many blogging sites, teachers are able to set privacy settings to ensure student safety. Richardson gives many great tips to starting small and eventually evolving. With sites like blogger.com, it's easy to create fun, attractive, and easy to navigate blogs. Now, bring Wikis into the picture, and that's a whole new playing field. Instead of contributing to blogs and commenting on previous posts, Wikis allow contributions from anyone. But what about Wikipedia? Most educators don't allow their students to rely on information from the site. But why? Allowing students to retrieve facts from a collaborative environment isn't completely horrible. Actually, it's kind of great. Because so many people are able to contribute their ideas, the information provided on a specific topic provides many points of view. Yes, there are also safety concerns that educators must be aware of, but with proper monitoring, wikis can be great tools for students to use both in and out of the classroom!
I agree with you that the wiki concept should not be deplored as a source of information. The wiki is perhaps the best expression of collaborative and constructivist learning you will ever see. Further, studies have shown that the vast majority of, for lack of a better term, 'serious' information listed on Wikipedia is quite reliable.
ReplyDeleteBrian