blog post 6

I'm not sure that all aspects of Web 2.0 should be used in K-12 schooling. Wikipedia and Wikispaces are definitely useful because students can learn information from outside sources, and contribute their own knowledge, and teachers can easily convey information with the use of Wikispaces. However, sites like Facebook and Myspace have no use in the educational environment, except allowing students to connect with their classmates. So I would use Web 2.0 sometimes, but not all of it.

I love Wikipedia. I use it all the time to look up terms I'm not sure about (such as Web 2.0), or to look up facts on people and events. All my teachers in high school refused to let us use Wikipedia as a reference for research papers because it wasn't "reliable" due to the fact that anyone can create a Wikipedia page and change information to make it incorrect. This is true, but the site works hard to make sure all the information is as accurate as possible. I think Wikipedia shouldn't be the only resource a child uses to learn something, but I think it's an excellent source to use first because it provides a foundation for the knowledge in an easy to understand manner. Then the child can have an understanding of the topic and find new words to also research with
other Internet or book resources.

Learning about Wikispaces was really cool, especially since I didn't know it even existed. I think it will be useful to use Wikispaces as a teacher because it allows me to easily create my own webpage, where I can provide information on topics we discuss in class, upcoming events, and other important things to remember. Wikispaces gives me multiple pages to design on, which could allow the creation of an archive of posts; each page could be dedicated to a week in school and students will be able to go back to each week in case they need to look up information. No information is ever lost.