Blogs and Google Docs.

Blogs:

Blogs can be incorporated into the classroom in many different ways. Today’s students have witnessed the rapid advancement of the technological world. So one would assume today’s students would be able to use the present technology or at least learn it more rapidly than older adults. With this said, the use of blogs in a modern day classroom should be beneficial for both teachers and students.

Teachers selecting to use blogs are able to share ideas with other teachers with a goal of creating better teaching techniques for lessons and/or activities of a particular topic. This would benefit students who would be the recipients of more intriguing or interesting lessons and/or activities. Teachers from a wide area and diverse situations are enabled to share their teaching methods in hopes of creating the best learning environment for their students.

Blogs are also good for students; providing them with the ability to be published and share ideas with the world outside of their classrooms. It provides them a voice by which to share their opinion. Teachers can use blogs for assignments based on current readings which encourage interaction of thoughts among students. They can share more than knowledge of subject matter such as voice an opinion and watch for the interaction of others as they respond an opportunity to ask questions and receive answers is beneficial and permits greater understanding.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to adding blogging to a classroom. A clear disadvantage is not every student has access to a computer or internet outside of the school setting. A clear understanding of what is appropriate for posting on a blog. Is needed and must be adhered to. This promotes the opportunity for teachers to talk about being safe on the internet, yet does not protect students from other inappropriate exposures. An advantage of blog usage is students continue to stay relevant with modern technological use which is a vital part of today’s society and everyday living. Blogs also allow students to be more interactive with classmates that they may not be comfortable with at school.  It allows the shy student an opportunity to voice an opinion without the fear of speaking in front of the entire class. Also, a student absent from school can use a blog as a means of communicating with the classroom teacher and classmates keeping them up to date with assignments and lessons.

Technology is changing the world we live in; we need to know how it works and how to teach our students to use it appropriately. Teachers can take the advantage of blogging with their students to form better lines of communication.

Google Docs:

Before this class I knew very little about Google Docs. I was aware of the advantage of using it to create documents and sending them to others to review and comment on but had not learned the proper techniques needed to utilize it. I like the fact that it auto-saves the document. I also learned it can be utilized to create more than documents, things such as presentations and spreadsheets can be made and shared easily. An advantage of Google Docs is the security; only people you intend to share them with can view them. I also like that if someone wants to put comments on the document they can create the comment bubble on the side and put their thoughts  there to be easily and readily viewed.  Additionally, pictures too can be shared and incorporated. It enables teachers to respond to students quickly, keep notes of faculty meetings and being able to send them to everyone. Advantages for students are, it enables peer editing, allows access to documents at home and enables working on projects together outside of class.  Another advantage is, a presentation done on Google Docs can be retrieved on the internet and correlated without the need to download the document or saving it on a flash drive.

A clear disadvantage is it does not function without internet access to the computer. Another disadvantage is the involved steps to print papers or projects from Google Docs itself.

Although I’m still learning how to use Google Docs there are many features I like. I intend to learn more and utilize it both in my own learning and incorporate it into my future teaching world.