Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms | Will Richardson

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms | Will Richardson | An excellent resource!

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Blogs, Wikis, Podc...

	Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Will Richardson Corwin Press, 2006 - 168 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"We need a solid book explaining and illustrating and letting teachers know about these powerful tools. This book meets the need in an awesome way!"
-Mike Muir, Director
Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning

"This author is a gem! It startles me to be 'pulled' so happily through a text about these new Web tools in the context of good literacy instruction."
-Gary Graves, Senior Research and Evaluation Advisor, Technology in Education
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory

Discover how to harness Web tools to motivate and update student reading, research, and communication!

This book brings teachers a bold vision and on-the-ground Monday morning practicality. It will move educators to think differently about technology?s potential for strengthening students' critical thinking, writing, reflection, and interactive learning. Will Richardson demystifies words like "blog," "wiki," and "aggregator" making classroom technology an easily accessible component of classroom research, writing, and learning.

This guide demonstrates how Web tools can generate exciting new learning formats, and explains how to apply these tools in the classroom to engage all students in a new world of synchronous information feeds and interactive learning. With detailed, simple explanations, definitions and how-tos, critical information on Internet safety, and helpful links, this exciting book opens an immense toolbox, with specific teaching applications for Web logs, the most widely adopted tool of the read/write Web Wikis, a collaborative Webspace for sharing published content Rich Site Summary (RSS), feeding specific content into the classroom Aggregators, collecting content generated via the RSS feed Social bookmarking, archiving specific Web addresses Online photo galleries

This book makes it possible for anyone, no matter how inexperienced, to harness this amazing technology for the classroom today!

(20051121)

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Awesome!

This is a great book. I am thoroughly enjoying every page! It is giving me so much inspiration and instruction on how to use these tools. Great examples and resources too.

An excellent resource!

Finally a book all about how to incorporate the newest in technology in the classroom. Combines info that's been floating around on the internet into a concise book and an easy read. Many great ideas.

Good intro to the tools for the classroom

This book gives an introduction to a number of Internet-based tools and how they can be used by teachers. The focus tends to be on K-12, but the principles are applicable (generally) to other settings, including higher education.

The author covers blogs, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking, Flickr, and podcasting. Some strengths of this book include:
-Solid introduction to each tool for those not familiar
-Simple "how to" to get started with each tool
-Good pointers to resources, especially the free ones
-Some commentary on the significance of these tools that goes beyond "gee whiz"

Some weaknesses:
-In spite of a focus on K-12, there was little discussion of how to use these tools to support specific educational standards. Granted, that's a huge task, but some examples would be nice. Then again, if you "get" the tools, that exercise is for the reader.
-Huge emphasis on blogs, much shorter entry on podcasting. I can only guess that the author wrote about what he knew most about.

The physical paperback itself is ok. Mine definitely shows the wear and tear of being carried around in my bag.

Overall: if you're a teacher (or technology coordinator) and are a relative newcomer to these tools, this is a very good place to start.

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Great for Educators!

I am an elementary school teacher who values technology integration in classrooms. Initially, the book begins slow with an overabundant amount of details about the simplicity of blogging. Some advice is given to lead novices in the right direction tailored to their blogging interests.

An aside: As I was searching on the Internet for safe and secure blog sites for young students, I found this website: http://mhetherington.net/blogs/?p=8 which was created by a middle school teacher with similar interests in student technology involvement. It details steps that can lead any teacher into a free (yet time consuming) setup for students to use. (I used this website to create my own blog site for my 32 fourth grade students and it worked marvelously!)

The author then introduced the power of wikis. I really appreciated the real-life accounts from actual educators who use wikis for group projects with students. I did feel a like the examples came mostly from secondary education and did not focus heavily on primary student possibilities with wikis. PB wiki (peanut butter wiki) for educators was explained and the book offered some great resources for teachers on a low budget with wiki interests.

Next, RSS feeds were explained. Although much of the explanations of RSS feeds were still above my head in understanding, I learned a number of values in using RSS feeds with the Web. One of the examples used in the book was that one could subscribe to all RSS feeds in Cyberspace about a topic of interest. If a person is interested in "Global Warming in California," they can subscribe to any place on the Internet that may use those words as an update when stories or writing is produced and submitted on websites you may not know existed. RSS feeding is a promising method of allowing the computer to do the searching for you.

During my reading of this book, I posted two blogs (on blogger.com) about my reflections. Within 3 days of my writing, the author of this book, Will Richardson, posted a comment on my blog thanking me for reading his book. My inferences told me he may have an RSS feed in Cyberspace that brings him news about whenever information is posted about himself or his book. I was impressed by his comment as this showed me he practiced what he preached in his book and really values the technology he promotes.

By the end of the book, podcasting, screencasting, and videos were introduced as well. In all, the book catered more toward novices and technology learners, not experts. Experts may find this book a bit juvenile, while I enjoyed it for its practicality and rapid information. My favorite part of the book stands at the providing of websites and tools that can be searched just seconds after reading about them. I found that using this book as a user's manual was helpful for technology novices on the go.

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Great practical ideas and resources for teachers

I started reading Will Richardson's book to educate myself about how teachers and instructors have been utilizing web tools into their curriculum. In October 2007, I attended the Computers in Libraries conference and participated in a workshop called "New Research Tools" where they discussed practical and successful cases of educators using various online tools, like Flickr, Clipmarks, or RSS readers.

As a librarian, a 2nd year educator, and one who personally uses these different tools, I really am interested in incorporating these tools into the curriculum.

During the course of reading this book, I have started reading Will Richardson's blog - Web-logged - as well as other educator and librarian blogs. This book has inspired me to try to incorporate the different tools that I enjoy using personally into the curriculum.

Richardson's enthusiasm for these various web tools is conveyed through each chapter. He devotes chapters to each tool. For example, there is a chapter on Blogs, one on RSS and one on wikis. It is easily explained and whether you use these tools already or not, his writing is easily accessible. I have been promoting this book to my colleagues and have also pointed some of them to his blog.

His chapter on Wikis has caused me to reassess my hesitance towards utilizing Wikipedia as a valid source of information. I am still skeptical but one should be skeptical when approaching print media as well.

The chapters are short and easy to understand. He has an excellent list of resources and great examples of people who are already incorporating the read/write web into their classrooms. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Web 2.0, education and technology.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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