Blogs and Wikis in Education

One way that blogs are being used in K-12 classrooms is to create a means for classes to publish their work. Considering the great amount of online resources created by professionals, it only makes sense that students would learn to create similar publications. Another way to use a blog in a classroom is to use the comment features to get feedback from your students. This would encourage metacognition. An additional benefit for using blogs in a classroom is that it allows teachers to share materials and resources with their students so they can access them at school and home. Additionally, this is environmentally responsible by eliminating paper waste. These ideas and many more can be found at http://edublogs.org/10-ways-to-use-your-edublog-to-teach/.
RSS readers would be very useful in a long-term project. This would allow students to frequently get updates on the topic of the project without wasting time by searching for the information. This also would make it easier for students to get the most recent information, instead of using outdated sources.
One positive outcome of using blogs and wikis in education is that students will become more technology literate. This will be useful throughout their entire lives. Another benefit of blogs and wikis in the classroom is that they give students more responsibility. Publishing in a public forum requires a significant amount of responsibility, and this will make students more thoughtful about their submissions.
A negative outcome of using blogs and wikis in education is that students that have a difficult time with technology will focus on using the technology opposed to the technology being a means to support learning the content. Another negative aspect of using blogs and wikis in the classroom is that it eliminates the need for face-to-face social interactions. Many young people spend so much time interacting through technology that their social skills have been diminished.