Chapter 1 and 2 in Richardson Comments

The first two chapters in Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Webtools for Classrooms seemed like a pretty strong argument for why they are important for the world in general and education specifically. The chapters made me think about many possible uses of the web tools for classroom use. Some of the ideas that struck me the most were the use of a blog as a class specific, open forum newspaper, using individual student’s blogs as a kind of portfolio about a specific topic that would be their own beyond high school, and the idea of using a blog with digital video as a sort of field trip with either an expert in the field of study or for having groups of students record and share field projects with the other students in a subject.

Almost as quickly as possible uses were occurring to me, so were questions about how to make them work. Many of these questions were technical in nature, but so basic that I am sure we will discuss them in class at some point. I wondered about the benefits and difficulties of allowing reports on a school-based weblog anonymous and what all is necessary for true anonymity to be possible. I considered what various equipment would cost, such as digital video cameras and what kinds of policies would be necessary for providing them to students or subject experts to use outside of the classroom. I wondered what the benefits of having a “normal” code driven website were over using simple weblogs, Was space the main issue or some other consideration? I wondered what a portal was and how are listservs different from blog subscriptions.

The discussion about the development of a read-write rather than read only web was illuminating to me. Richardson’s disappointment that blogs and the like are used much more for social reasons rather than more academic ones was funny to me. It made me think of the sorts of programs available on television and the proportions of different program sorts. Even if the web is a two-way connection, how likely is it to follow a similar pattern to television in the proportion of educational to entertaining programs.

I think his statement on page forty about how it will be “messy sorting through issues of trust and reliability” was very true and perhaps even understated.