Wiki sites

About a year ago for one of my grad classes I was asked to sign up for a wiki account and that would be the site that our class used during our online weeks and for turning in papers for peer editing. The initial sound of the website was that it was the same as blackboard (at least for this class we were using it for). Once we were all signed onto an account we ran into many problems. Papers were not loading, comments did not show up, some people were locked out of their page and a few other issues. I can honestly say that once we had ran into so many problems I was turned off to the wiki sites and never visited them again until this class. Assuming that the problems my class had faced with the site are fixed then I could see this being useful for an education class. The idea of group collaboration is great and being able to use this website to post information, papers, research and other items then have it peer reviewed could be a great help to children. Once again this in not something that I can use in my classroom so it is difficult for me to give ideas on how I would use this with my class. It could be a way to communicate with my parents but we already have so many ways of communicating with them that it would just be one more thing for me to take time out of my day for.  And as we all know, teachers do not have enough hours in the day as it is to get all their information and work completed. I myself take work home and do a lot of emailing at night and on weekends. If I were to have two more hours in each day I would get so much work completed!

Have fun and learn with web 2.0

after looking at the websites this week all I can say is where was Diigo during my undergrad??!! The amount of paper I wasted printing out web pages to highligh and add sticky notes to and yet you can do it online. In one aspect this does not surprise me but in another I am amazed at the fact that technology has come to the point that you can highlight online and save the information. To me it is a great way to save on paper. I just wish that I did not find out about this website during my last semester of grad school. Another thing I like about Diigo is the collaboration and ability to research a large about of information. I think that I will be able to use this site for finding information I am looking for within my classroom. I see this site being great for upper level education. Certain projects like social studies could be used with this site to gather much information as well as save and highlight.