Powered By Blogger

Saturday, September 29, 2007

I can't make up my mind about Wikispaces. Part of me really likes the accessibility of it and I feel that it is incredibly easy to navigate. The links are easy to create and manage and the format of the site overall is simple enough so any student, teacher, or family member can maneuver throughout the site with ease. However, it seems incredibly impersonal. The whole idea of communicating from teacher to student, student to student, or teacher to parent through electronic medium is a little hard for me to fully grasp or enjoy simply becuase it takes all of the conversation and personal exchange that is unattainable without face to face interaction. I have found that people are able to connect on a deeper level, establishing a base of trust between students, teachers, and parents. This relationship is very important to establish and maintain and I become more and more concerned with being able to create those links and relationships as, and again I see the benefits, we as teachers move toward electronic communication.

2 comments:

emc2teach said...

I agree with you about the wiki. I feel that although it is important to be able to naviagate and put things up on a webpage, it does lose a part of that interaction. That interaction is what helps us to get to know our students and without it, there may be a drop in connections between teachers and students.

LAN said...

You have to understand that wiki and other web based tools are only means to supplement your face to face interactions with students. Originally conceived as a tool to do collaborative writing, wiki is only a way to communicate, collaborate online. Having face to face or more personal interaction should still be part of your teaching.