Article Assessment #2
Jamie Townsend
townsend@gci.net
9/1/07

"The Educator's Guide to the Read/Write Web"

by Will Richardson

Overview

In his article "The Educator's Guide to the Read/Write Web," Will Richardson describes the new creation and publication tools on the Internet and how they have and will continue to contribute to education. The web used to be a place to consume information, but with new tools like blogs and wikis the web is now also a major forum for broadcasting.

Richardson writes to heighten awareness of these new tools and the way in which they have revolutionized education, but he also reminds educators to beware of content. Since anyone can post information now, it is more important then ever to teach students to discern between scholarly or reputable material and less trustworthy sources. Richardson maintains an inclusive attitude toward technology and it's ability to enhance modern education, while still reserving practical concerns about the reality of dangers and drawbacks in this relatively new media.

Reference Points

1.) Weblogs or blogs are online forums where amateurs of "hypertext markup language" can

post writings by simply typing in the box and clicking publish.

2.) Blogs allow student to target audiences and create online learning communities, and an new one appears online every two seconds.

3.) Wikis (the Hawaiian word for quick) is a "site that anyone can edit at any time. Wikipedia.org is the most renowned example. Researchers and writers maintain accuracy by self-editing the material. Vandalism and inaccuracies are cleared up by the members themselves.

4.) Really Simple Syndication (RSS) allows users to subscribe to many feeds and receive updates from an aggregator. The aggregator targets new material and alerts users subscribed to that feed. This technology make is easier to keep up with numerous different online sites.

5.) Social bookmarking enables users to bookmark certain sites and save a copy of the site in a folder. This tool allows teachers to narrow or pinpoint "like-minded professionals" in their effort to collaborate and collect data from the web.

6.) Podcasts are homemade radio programs. Videos of news programs, field trips, interviews, oral reports and an endless variety of videos are available on the web at any time.

7.) The scope and definition of literacy is changing and expanding due to these new tools available on the Internet. Along with reading and writing-- collaborating, editing, and active questioning/evaluating of online material will be imperative skills in a students scholastic repertoire.

8.) Teachers roles often shift from content expert to guiding students through the online information supplied by a huge host of experts of every rank and station. In 2005, 75.5% of teachers thought the web was valuable for teaching their content area, 68.4% said the net improved academic achievement, and 58% believed it was effective in raising standardized test scores.

9.) Relevancy is heightened by broadening students' audience from teacher to world. Assignments are posted for large audiences to view and build upon rather than merely filed or trash-canned.

10.) Student safety must be observed when making decisions of how widely to publish their work, revealing students' personal information, and handling encounters with lewd or otherwise inappropriate content.

Reflection

Wonderfully informative and refreshingly upbeat, this article was a pleasure to read and analyze. After the previous article, "Listen to the Natives," I especially enjoyed Richardson's positive emphasis on teachers' changing roles with incorporation of the Internet into education. While Marc Prensky cynically depicted teachers as obsolete fools, Richardson actually sets up a forum for a constructive dialogue. From the statistics Richardson gives, it appears that most teachers recognize and accept the possibilities and benefits that new technology has brought to education.

The explanations of these new tools were also highly beneficial to me. Though I have blogged a little, I certainly did not understand terms like wikis and podcasts (even though I've experienced both medias countless times), and I feel a great deal steadier on these terms and concepts now. The responsibilities of educators to guide students through scholarly sources as opposed to unaccredited ramblings as they navigate the net is an issue that I've already been discussing with one of my host teachers. I am excited to get these article reviews done so that I can loan him this magazine!

Richardson, Will. "The Educator's Guide to the Read/Write Web." Educational Leadership 63.4 (2005/2006): 24-27.