Will+Richardson

http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com/
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Will Richardson’s site is full of links to blogs, opinions, articles, and more links concerning the subject of how the web is changing the education of our K-12 students. He is the author of “ [|Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms] ,” (2nd Edition). He is also a founding partner of the Connective Learning Group which is dedicated to assisting educators understand and use Read/Write Web tools intheir schools and classrooms.

There are so many links on his page that it would take forever to look at them all. I looked at a few of them. One of them I went to, “Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis?” from the website //Science Daily,// discussed both pros and cons of learning through technology instead of through traditional learning. Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles analyzed studies on learning and technology, and concluded that no media is good for everything, it is best to use a variety of learning methods, both traditional and a more visual approach, in order to produce a more balanced set of knowledge and skills. [|//http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128092341.htm//]

Another one of the links I chose to look at was an article published in Educational Leadership, November, 2008 [] which basically says that educators and parents need to understand the ins and outs of social networking in order to help our children use the web safely and to their future advantage. This was a very informative, thought-provoking article which should almost be a must-read for parents and educators. Even though I am still not sure so much of our lives should be spent using computers, the change is inevitable and we must learn to “ride the tide” wisely. In the article is an amazing example of what a ten year old girl named Laura accomplished with her blog. Richardson’s thoughts and Laura’s story continues in Richardson's next article published in edutopia: //http://www.edutopia.org/collaboration-age-technology-will-richardson//

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