Again, I find that I’m becoming more and more a fan of using advanced technology like this in the classroom. Every chapter in Richardson’s text gives me better and newer ideas of what to do and what works well within a classroom–this is one book that I definitely won’t be selling back! Giving students a forum where they can really feel empowered to stretch their writing/editing muscles just makes sense to me and again, it’s using a forum that they are already comfortable and familiar with. We as teachers in the 21st century have to find a way to integrate old school learning with new school education or else we’re going to lose our students. I think that old methods alienate rather than encourage (at least, I know that I used to hate to do in the library what I could do faster and better online) advanced learning–learning past what the curriculum tells us to teach.

On another note, I’ve always been a fan of Wikipedia. I’ve never come across a page that has given me blatantly false information and I can usually use good old common sense (or a few extra minutes of research) to determine when I need to delve a little deeper or when I should take it at its word. And yeah, students might not be as discerning as us when it comes to true/false information, but we can teach them to develop those skills. I mean, someone’s going to have to, so why not us? Even if they don’t master that particular skill, at least they will have been exposed to having to sort through multiple editors, sources, and writing forms to determine which is right.

Wikis seem to be a great way to really give the lesson back to the student and put them in control of how much they take from a lesson. I’m really just excited to be learning all these alternative ways to teach!