Read/Write Web Assessment

I. Brian Pautzke bpautzke@yahoo.com 9/18/07

The Educator’s guide to the Read/Write Web by Will Richardson

II. In this day and age the internet is used for more than just information gathering, people now use it as a world sounding board where they can post their own work. It also provides the opportunity for students use blogs to collaborate with each other as well as with professionals, enriching their education. The article addresses the benefits of self-policing and self creating websites such as Wikipedia, an open forum which allows users to change the information. Social bookmarking opens the doors for teachers to create website portfolios and share those with interested teachers.

I really like the idea of a classroom portfolio blog, where students have to share their writing with others. A critical point that Richardson brings up is about the evaluation of the material, there is so much information on the web that teaching critical reading skills is crucial. He concludes that the new read/write web will provide students of disparate backgrounds unique opportunities to learn from each other.

III.
1. The Read/Write web allows students to collaborate.
2. Blogs allow easy online communication.
3. The community of wiki writers maintain a high level of accuracy and appropriateness.
4. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) allows people to subscribe to a stream of information.
5. Social book-marking sites: furl.net and del.icio.us
6. Giving the student the feeling that they are “publishing” their work can have positive effects.
7. Filtering out the questionable information will become a crucial skill.
8. Student privacy could become an issue as they publish their information.

IV. Will Richardson does not work at Bartlett. That was my initial reaction to the article. He is idealistic, thinking that high school students will get into publishing their work and going the extra mile. My students have a hard enough time turning in in-class work let alone trying to get them to publish their material. Also access is a point he did not address, a good percentage of my students do not have access to the internet, so unless we were planning on spending a lot of time in the library the idea of web writing does not work. However, I like the idea , and I like that we have an opportunity to do web writing in this class.

Blogging is not there yet, reading and writing blogs is not mainstream. I don’t have to wonder how many people have read my blog page, I would be crazy to think it is more than two. This notion of some amazing easy access new world of trading information and thought is interesting and some day it might shape how we learn and how we teach but I am skeptical that a school like Bartlett will be ready any time soon.