Blogs in Education

1. Discuss your search results and why you feel they were similar or different.

My search for "Educational Blogs" on Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves turned up very similar results. The links that came up on each of the searches came up results such as educational.blogs.com and the top 100 educational blogs. The only differences that I noticed were the order that the results came up. Eventually all the results seemed to be the same.

2. Indentify and describe 3 interesting/innovative ways blogs are being used in K-12 classrooms.

Three ways that I noticed that blogs were being used in the classroom that were intriguing to me were using blogs for writing projects in the classroom, to continue learning outside of the classroom, and the one I found to have the most relevance to me was using blogs to share ideas with other teachers. All of these seem like they would be very useful in the classroom.

3. Describe your search on RSS readers/aggregators and how you might use them in a classroom.

My search for RSS readers and aggregators turned up some interesting results. I found out what exactly they were, for example; I had an idea of what they were but I never put two and two together. They are synonymous with feeds, I just didn't realize it. Although there are other examples and uses for readers and aggregators these news feeds are probably the most widely used.

4. Discuss the impact you think blogging and using RSS readers may have on K-12 classrooms.

I think that blogging and RSS readers could have a great impact on classrooms. Although it seems like they are not widely used right now, they are becoming more used. Blogs and readers can be used to help in the learning process and make it that much more meaningful to the learner. There are many classes that could use blogs to provide information to parents and other teachers and RSS readers can be used to provide information to students for use in classes.

5. Describe at least 2 pros and 2 cons of using blogs and RSS readers in education.

Pros that seem the most likely are that they are helpful to both parents and students and they also provide a unique learning opportunity to learners. The only cons that seem probable are the fact that not all students and/or parents have access to computers and also not all students will learn well using this style of learning.