The Educator’s Guide to the Read/Write Web - Article 2

Overview
In the article “The Educator’s Guide to the Read/Write Web” Will Richardson talks about how the internet has gone from read only to read and write for the average person. With new web tools like blogs and wikis posting your own information on the web is as simple as typing in text and hitting a few buttons. By incorporating new technology in the classroom students can learn more and have the most up to date information. Using tools like Google students are able to obtain the most current information, as compared to text books that could be a decade old.

With the ability to publish their work students may also take more pride in what they do. Papers suddenly become something that more people can read, and is not just written for the teacher. Students are also able to communicate with people from all around the world. They can ask questions of other students, or even authors of the novels they are reading.


Reference Points
A student doing a project on global warming can have the latest research a short time after it has been published

“The awareness of even a small audience can significantly change the way a students approaches writing and other school assignments.

“consumers of Web content need to be editors as well as readers”

“Google regularly scans in information from more than 50 million books…”


Reflection
Thinking back to when I was in middle school we didn’t even have the internet to do research, we had to go the library and do it the old fashion way, and that was only 14 years ago. With the way technology is changing we have to keep up with it, or our students will fall behind. My generation was more of a learn as you go with the internet. My teachers were learning it along with us. Now it is up to us to stay ahead of the technology so that we can teach it to our students. If we fall behind, we are failing them. In today’s society a student is expected to know how to write an e-mail. It is a standard thing to ask on a form, and one of the first things you place on your resume.

What I found very interesting about this article was the difference between blocking sites and teaching students to regulate themselves. Knowing what sites can be trusted is a major part of taking information from the web. If students go on to college they will have free range on the site they can go to. No one will be with them saying that is a bad site, or you can’t trust that site. They will need to figure that out on their own, and if they have never had any guidance it will be that much harder.