The first ICT tool i looked at was a blog. The question that arises from this is, what exactly is a blog?
A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art, photographs, sketches, videos, music, audio, which are part of a wider network of social media.
Having been using a blog for the past few weeks for this course i can see a few benefits of how it could be of benefit within the classroom context. Mainly i would view a blog as being used as a reflective tool for the LM, an online professional diary of sorts. This would allow the LM to access it anywhere where there was a computer and internet access, at home or at school. The comments section would also be useful in that the LMs work colleges could post suggestions to problems that the LM has encountered in the classroom from their own knowledge, research or experience.
The second tool that was looked at was that of a wiki. Firstly what is a wiki?
A wiki is an online space where users and guests can edit, modify, add, remove information with intuitive editing tools.
An excellent example of this can be found when looking at the E-Learning wiki found here. A wiki is an excellent tool for completing collaborative online tasks. A wiki draws in all of the benefits that comes with ICTs and their usefulness in the classroom as well as the benefits of collaborative learning. Students are able to complete LM set tasks at their own pace and in their own time if they aren't able to complete the work in class, this allows for students to not fall behind while keeping the parents informed of what is going on in the classroom and the learning that is occurring.
Overall the wiki was an excellent tool due to all of the many tools taht it allowed me to experiment with. I was able to upload a wide variety of media that i can see being of great use within a classroom context. The
Lastly the third tool that was looked at this week was a website, or in this case a weebly. A description of what a weebly is pasted below as found on wikipedia.
A weebly is an online, free widget-based web site creator.
It uses a widget-style format, allowing users to create pages with only
a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements (images,
text, or interactive content, etc.) onto a page and filling in the
content.
Weeblys have always been a favorite tool of mine to use, its user friendliness and usefulness makes it an excellent website, both for personal and educational use. From my personal explorations on the website i found that a weebly seems to be the step up from first a blog and secondly a wiki. A blog is a personal tool that allows others to only comment on the posted content but not contribute or alter it in any way, a wiki on the other hand allow for endless collaborative learning to occur but with limitations on content organization and media types. Alternatively a weebly caters for all of the limitations within a wiki,allow for far more options and no limitations on upload of media types.
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