Ch 1

Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts and other Powerful Webtools for Classrooms

by Will Richardson

Chapter 1

Richardson's book starts a little slow, but right away it's clear that the world wide web has gone from a neat supplement that teachers might choose to dabble in, to an essential component needed to prepare student's for the present and the future.  In my opinion, Richardson is correct.  We can no longer avoid technology.  It is growing at an incomprehensible rate, and education for the most part, is crawling along with its usage of technology.  Even when we think we are on "the cutting edge", our processes are in the process of being outdated. If the past 25 years have just been the “warm up act”, it is mind blowing what the future of technology will bring.  Even in my relatively short exposure to computers, I have seen some fairly legit advancement.  With the benefits of technology, however, does come some chance of encountering unfortunate situations.  Schools do their best to block inappropriate websites, but there are too many to keep up with.  Richardson poses a good point, though.  While we cannot completely prevent students from accessing inappropriate material from the web, we can teach them how to respond when accidentally accessing an unwelcomed site.  With enough dialogue and preparation around handling awkward computer moments, students most likely will show an increase in maturity level.  Since many kids are online in an unsupervised situation at home, hopefully, these lessons will carry over to their computer usage when they leave school.