Task 1 - Your views on technology

Read the quotations, choose one and write your views about it.
Don´t forget to mention which quotation you chose.


1. Newer generations of social software have made it more commonplace for educators to publish course descriptions and syllabi on the Internet as well as build professional development communities. However, the use of Web-based publishing tools to share student work is not yet as widespread. (Kristen Kennedy, 2003)


2. If your objective is to create a learning community, weblogs can help you achieve it by giving students a space to share their writing with other students in the class, who have the opportunity to leave comments under their classmates' posts. Weblogs are also a powerful tool for teaching students about writing for an audience, as they are public, and they reach an audience of not only the teacher and the other students in the class, but also readers outside the class who leave comments. If your objective is to help students synthesize information and make connections through writing, weblogs can help you meet this objective by allowing students to take advantage of the Web. Weblog software makes it easy for students to create content for the Web without knowing much HTML, find online articles related to topics discussed in class, and share them easily with other students. In my experience, blogging encourages associative thinking. (Clancy Ratliff, 2004)


3. Blogs are both individualistic and collaborative. Blogs promote selfexpression, a place where the author can develop highly personalized content. Yet blogs connect with an online community—bloggers can comment and give feedback to other bloggers, and they can link to fellow bloggers, creating an interwoven, dynamic organization. In the classroom, students can have a personal space to read and write alongside a communal one, where ideas are shared, questions are asked and answered, and social cohesion is developed. ( David Huffaker, 2005)


4. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. (Nelson Mandela).


5. Weblogs offer students the opportunity to actively participate in collaborative learning in a number of ways:
• Knowledge sharing. Students can easily post their thoughts, ideas, and opinions, and interact with other
students right from the start of the exercise.
• Collaboration and group work. Students have the opportunity to comment/respond, and possibly write a
log jointly as a group. ( Helen S Du & Christian Wagner, 2005)


6. The Read/Write Web promises to transform much of how we teach and learn. We are no longer limited to being independent readers or consumers of information; we can be collaborators in the creation of a large storehouse of information. (Will Richardson, 2006)


7. Digital Natives are well versed in the uses and etiquette of computers, digital cameras, cell phones, text messaging, weblogs, and the like. These students have been born into a world filled with gadgets and online communication, and to most of them, it’s a way of life.
(Mark Prensky, 2001)


8. Difference between writing and blogging.

Writing stops.                         Blogging continues.
Writing is inside.                     Blogging is outside.
Writing is monologue.             Blogging is conversation.
(Will Richardson, 2006)