Richardson Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter Three has some more great information about creating your own blog, adding information and details to your blog, and blogging ideas to use in your own classroom. If you are interested in creating a classroom blog you can check out 21 classes. It's just another free way to set up classroom blogs and blogs for your students.

Before starting this class the only wiki that I ever heard of was Wikipedia. In the past, I used Wikipedia to research certain topics for either my students or myself. I, however, didn’t know much of what a wiki actual was. After reading Chapter Four, in Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, I have a much better understanding of what a wiki is and how I might use them in my personal and professional life.

I quickly explored the Wikijunior site and found some good information. I found some cute alphabet books I could use with my students. I also found tons of information on bugs; which is a unit of study that we explore in the spring. There was both information and pictures of all kind of different bugs. I will definitely use this site this spring to research information, and to also show my students the pictures of the different bugs. I will have my students come up with questions they have about different bugs. I will then use the site with them to try and find the information and answer their questions.

Personally I am always looking for different recipes to try. The recipe wiki mentioned in the chapter has tons of great recipes, from appetizers to desserts to beverages. The travel wiki mentioned in the chapter has some great information on different travel locations. It has some top travel destinations and tons of great information about each location. My students are always coming into the classroom singing different songs and I sometimes have no clue what they are trying to say or what song they are singing. Lyric wiki will help with that. You can find lyrics to thousands of different songs. You can search the site by artist, album, song title or label.