Richardson and Collins Book Reviews

Here are my book reviews for Richardson book and the Collins Book. The first two chapters are from the Richardson book and the last two chapters are from the Colliins book.
Chapter 3 (Richardson):
In this chapter, Richardson stated that Weblogs can play an important role in a classroom if it is implemented effectively. The factual potential of blogs in schools comes when students and
teachers use them as publishing tools. If a teacher requires a student to blog, then the teacher should in return blog as well. In this chapter, Richardson also states that teachers should blog to show students that it is something of value and to model appropriate ways of blogging. When someone blogs, they should start small. There is another piece of advice and that is to be a public blogger. Put your name on your work but first know the consequences of this before you do it. Before beginning to use weblogs with students one must make sure those students, parents, and even administrators are clear about the expectations and the reasoning behind it. One must make sure parents sign a permission form giving the students permission to blog. Teachers, as well as parents, must go over the guidelines and rules for weblog as a safety precaution. Weblog is an easy tool to use once you gain the knowledge of the tool. Make sure you go step by step so that you will not encounter and problems or mishaps. Pictures and clip arts and clip arts can be added as well.


Chapter 6 (Richardson):
In this chapter, it is talking about The Social Web and Learning Together. The Social Web states that we have many friends out there just waiting to be found and connected to, and those friends have other friends who can just easily connect with us and guide us to new and interesting information or learning. If we are willing to share our ideas and resources, we will gain as much if not more as much as we put out. There are over 1 billion people worldwide online now. There are many social networks but to name one from the book would be Twitter. Twitter is a “microblogging” tool that has exploded since the beginning in 2006. Twitter keeps your network at your fingertips. The only thing with Twitter is that it only allows 140 characters per “tweet.” One educational example of Twitter is what schools are beginning to use it as a way to communicate with parents and others in the community; School Bookmarking Services is another social network site. Millions of people have begun using public, online bookmarking services where they can save links, annotate them with unique keywords or “tags” to organize them, and then share them. Social networks can now be used to tap into the work of others to support our learning.

Chapter 6 (Collins):
Collins and Halverson talks about the three eras of education in the chapter. The three eras are the apprenticeship era, the Industrial Age, and the lifelong-learning era. In the apprenticeship era, parents decided what their children would learn. The Industrial Age allowed for large groups of children to receive instruction in a common curriculum. The reformers advocated taking control of education from parents and giving it to the state. In the present lifelong-learning era, responsibility for education is shifting away from the state and back to the parents for younger children and to the individual for teenagers and adults. People will begin to learn what they are interested in and responsibility will be taken back from the state. Horace Mann felt that if children were provided a free education, they would adopt American values and have the skills needed to do any kind of work they chose instead of their parents choosing for them. Many young people are pushing their own educational paths, learning what they think will be of value to them and accommodate them.

Chapter 9 (Collins):
What does it all mean? This chapter discusses the different technologies available and how students can put them to use and how the parents should be guiding and preparing the child with the different uses of technology at home and at school. It is stated that technology-based learning environments requires parents and teachers to pay attention to how (and what) children learn outside of school and the home. Video games provide the clearest case of the technology generation gap. One way to bridge this gap is to extend to the technology that the child is doing. Parents and teachers are concerned that students are reading less with all the new technology that is available. Technological innovation is breaking our administrative office with date systems and among students with gaming, leaving the teachers behind to maintain their traditional classroom practices. Americans need strong leadership from innovative educators to make sure that the new system embodies our society’s critical goals for education.