Digital Text

A blog can be similar to a digital news paper, in the sense that each day there can be different articles to read, past articles can be archived on the site, articles are dated so that readers know exactly when the posting happened, and it is not only a site for personal information. A Wiki can be thought of as more of an encyclopedia. People can access the history of changes that have been made on the Wiki, each time a page is created, an archived version of the page is also saved, and you can view who made the changes to the Wiki.

When a novice technological learner is working on a computer, the fewer the clicks the individual needs to make the better. Something that has far fewer clicks will likely be ingrained as a skill of the learner as opposed to something that has many clicks. Clicks matter!

Some browsers work better with blogs than others do. For example, Firefox and Google Chrome work well with blogs, and browsers like Internet Explorer are not as intuitive and sufficient for blogs.

The site: WordPress is, in my opinion, a far better site than Blogger. You can read others' blogs, favorite them to come back to, reblog them on your page, and search for a variety of blogs as well as post for yourself. It is more of a social media site; however, I think the benefits are great. I would consider using this in my classroom for students who want to research some of the mathematical concepts we are learning about that other people have posted information for.

Google Sites is a site that allows you to create your own website. You have the ability to add in a variety of different characteristics other than text, although I do not think it is the most intuitive and visually appealing site for a finished product. I would be more apt to use Weebly because its use is simplistic and aesthetically applealing. I would not use Google Sites, however, I would use Weebly in my classroom to either create my own website for them, or have them create an informational website for me about the content we are learning.

K12 Online Conference is a very cool site used by educators to communicate about new fronts made in the technological frontier. They stress the ultimate goal is that teachers are going to need to become more familliar with technology to better accommodate for their students--and they have it correct. I would certaily use this when I am a teacher because I always want to be up to date with the newest and most effective technology.