Chapter 6: Community Building with Technologies

It is highly important for students to be able to learn about how to build relationships with one another and with people that they do not necessarily know yet. As a teacher, it is our job not only to teach them math and how to read, but also how to build such relationships in a healthy, and globally friendly manner. Chapter 6 was about how to build such communities using technology in the classroom.

There are many great examples in the book on how to do just this. The book gave examples of Wikis (who knew there were so many!), blogging, forums, and also what to use to build international relationships and communications. As a reflection, I believe that this chapter is one of the most important chapters of the entire book thus far. I believe strongly that students should learn how to build healthy relationships with the people that they see in class each day and also with people who have different backgrounds than themselves.

Being someone of a different race and culture, I would have very much liked for my teachers to have included something like this in our classrooms. Although I am aware that there was not necessarily the technology for it, there were ways for them to branch out and help us to experience different things, but they did not take advantage of this. I think that KidLink and the Global Schoolhouse resources in this chapter will be great things to use in the classroom. Students will be able to practice how to communicate with people of a different culture and language and the students on the other side will be doing the same. If there is an ESL student in the classroom, this is also a great way for he/she to still use their primary language and to also practice their English in letting the rest of the class know what the other student is saying.

Blogging I think is another great tool to use in the classroom. Like the book says, it gives students the opportunity to let their voice be heard when they may be too shy for it to be inside the classroom. It also is a great alternative to book projects by allowing the students to post their thoughts of a book or an assigned chapter. It keeps things interesting and the kids are able to use technology and the internet to do their homework, which will be more encouraging I think to them then just sitting down and writing a report about what they read.

Although I did not register for KidLink (I can't handle another username and password!), the website was much less advanced than I thought it would be. There were several different languages that could have been chosen by students which I liked and it said that it was a safe process for students, which is always a concern for teachers and parents.

I have often used Wikipedia online to do random research for some things, and was always told not to use it, but I never knew why. Now that I know what a Wiki actually is, I think that teachers have to be very careful in what their students are finding on these types of sites. I explored Mediawiki, Wikiquote and also Wiktionary and all three of these sites are very user friendly and can be very useful in the classroom as long as the students are shown the correct and safe way to use them and to also know that some of the information may not be correct and if they are in doubt, they need to have the resources to find out the truth.

Overall, I found this chapter to be highly useful and I was able to find some resources myself to use in the classroom in addition to the ones in the book.

Here are two other resources that I found that can be used in the classroom:
http://my.echalk.com/?elqPURLPage=55?g=blogs&gclid=CPqnvc_N3JgCFRxN5QodjChCcg
http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/studwikis/