Week 2 Reflection

What are your early impressions of using a blog and what was your experience using a wiki this week? Any surprises, pleasant or otherwise?

Actually, that was the first time I used different of technology-based tools such as blog and wiki.

Sometimes, I followed some famous bloggers, but I did not expect I will own a simple blog by that ease. Really, it was easier than I think. That assignment makes me think about making a special blog publish diary with my little daughter.

On the other hand, a wiki is a great idea to gather information from various writers. However, I do not like to use it because of its lack of credibility of its information.But, I can not deny that wiki is a great tool to use it in education field because it has many advantages for students and teacher.  For instance, based on the video that our instructor posted it “Wiki in Plain English”, the wiki is a good opportunity to the collaborative workspace which could be created by the educator and gathered, shared, evaluated, and organized or used to produce something new by students. I believe that will motivate students to get involved in a learning process. 

Which part(s) of Dale’s Cone do you think each tool (Blog, Wiki) lends itself best to and why?
I think that Blog and Wiki belong to analyze, define, create, and evaluate parts of Dale’s Cone for obvious reasons. First, by providing an opportunity for students to contribute creating something new that will give them more control over a project’s outcome and encourage them to be producers instead of consumers (read and remember) of information. Second, I believe that blog is an interesting method to link all students in the collaborative environment which create new learning styles instead of a traditional way. Third, by using that technology (wiki and blog) students can create their own blog and publish their writing rather than using a notebook. Also, it gives students a chance to save their writing in a safe place.

Considering Siegel’s concept of “computer imagination”, what do you think would be at least one “imaginative” educational use of each tool (blog, Wiki) that takes advantage of each tool’s inherent strengths? That is, what do you think you and/or your students could use these tools for that they might not be able to do with other more simple or low-tech tools? Or, as Postman might ask, what is a problem to which each of these tools is an answer?

Based on the Siegel’s concept of “computer imagination”, I believe that blog is a great tool to gather homework, assignment, and design some pages instead of using the textbook. I ensure that student will like that method because it is new and they will be excited to work on it. Moreover, the blog can be as a measure for students’ progress beginning of start semester to the final week.  On the other hand, blog assists teacher too because it easy to check and read all the classes blogs.  I believe that Blog is free space for students to innovate and create something special.

I suggest using Wiki based on the Siegel’s concept of “computer imagination” as a tool to gather an enormous number of ideas, beliefs, or comments in a general view as brainstorm before beginning a chapter about some topic or as a collective assessment after taking a lesson.

 However, I think there is a problem that we can not apply that method for kids because they might find some difficulty in accessing the internet or using those technology tools.