Week 2 Discussion

My second week's article is entitled "The Blogging Phenomenon:Who? How? Why?" and I found the article on digital divide .net. The article starts out talking about how the word blog was voted word of year in 2004 and ABC news declared bloggers People of the Year. Blogs can be focused on one specific idea written by one author who can incorporate different ideas or by many writers focused on one or many topics. Blogs are made up of many different types of media, including writing, images, video clips and pictures. The pictures can be taken with digital camera and now with mobile phones.
Blogs have been around since the mid-90s but in the past couple years blogs have been especially embraced. In the past couple elections, both political conventions were covered by bloggers. In the U.S alone there are more than 8 million blogs and now 6 million Americans now a large portion of their news and information through blogs. When blogs started out the average blogger was a white male but in recent times surveyors have found that women and minorities are starting to blog more and more. One feature that makes blogging different than other forms of information media is the ability for readers to provide feedback by posting a comment.
I think the technology of blogging relates to teaching and learning because I believe it is a good way for students that might be too shy to participate in class to come back and post a blog about his/her comments from the class and the teacher and students can come and comment to the blog. Also, for an online class since there is no face to face meetings this is a perfect way to communicate with students and the teacher.
I think blogging would be a positive experience for teachers to use it more with class discussions and assignments. I think further research is necessary because teachers that aren't using should consider using it in their classrooms.

Week 1 Discussion

The article I read by Juli S. Charkes it was published on March 25, 2007 entitled, "In the Region", I found the article on New York Times.com. The article talks about a middle school in White Plains that has seen the Amazon rain forest in Brazil in a virtual field trip and talked to their peers in Sri Lanka and have watched scuba divers along the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Charles writes, "Virtual field trips rely on interactive, videoconferencing, the same technology that businesses have used for decades". She goes on to say that the equipment used for a virtual field trip consist of camera, projector, special hardware and Internet signal.

The students at White Plains Middle School have also visited the Iditarod sled race in Alaska, chatted with NASA officials and the students played their music for the members of the Cleveland Philharmonic. The principal of the middle school, Joseph Cloherty said, "This brings with it an understanding of the world, students begin to have an understanding of themselves not just as citizens of White Plains, but of the world as well". Although these virtual field trips seem like a good idea to everyone, some educators think that schools need to consider what will be lost when real-life interaction is replaced with just virtual connection. These educators think that it won't submerge the students into the culture.

I think that these virtual field trips are a positive addition to teaching and learning. I think the students and parents would rather not have to pay for field trips out of the country, but still want their children to get to experience new cultures and sights. I think students should get to experience the virtual field trips and the out of school field trips. Virtual field trips give the students oppurtunities to come back the location again and again. The students will be able to get something out of every visit because they will be able to visit the location again and talk to other students there.

I think further research would be very helpful because with more research educators would be able to find more places to visit with their students and more and more schools would be able to participate in virtual field trips.