The Practice of Read/Write the Web

Laron Thomas llthomas2@uas.alaska.edu October 22, 2008
“The Educator’s Guide to the Read/Write Web” by Will Richardson

Overview of Article

In Richardson’s article “The Educator’s Guide to Read/Write the Web," he proposes a change in educators’ paradigms toward technology use.

First, he claims that most educators use technology, and esp. the internet, to simply consume information if they use it at all. According to Richardson, this is old school thinking and not the goal of education. Instead, educators should use the newly available resources to create unique and highly interactive learning situations for the students where they can produce as well as consume. Hence, the name is Read/Write the Web.

This is the essence of the Read/Write Web paradigm. Students can use blogs, wikis, RSS (Really Simple Syndicatiton) such as podcasting to collaborate with others in a growing pool of knowledge on the internet.

Richardson goes a step beyond just reporting what’s new out there on the internet; he further discusses what educators need to do (i.e., the demands on teachers) to switch their pedagogical paradigms so that they can use these new educational tools, and the risks and benefits of taking such an approach toward education.

Reference Points

• Read/Write Web focuses on tools now available on the internet to enhance student learning
• Blogs can be used by students for reflections, collaborations, and student portfolios
• I esp. like the idea of blogs used “to build classroom resource portals and to foster online learning communities,” (p 24) which students can be a part of
• Richardson points out using podcasting for such things as “audio tours of local museums and points of interest, weekly news programs about their [the students and teachers’] classrooms, oral histories and interviews, and more” (p 26).
• The teachers should not be the "sage on the stage" but the "guide on the side," modeling thier role as “content creators” (p27) and modeling how to use technology for academic purposes
• Teachers should carefully monitor students with consideration of privacy and safety of everyone involved, school rules, and state and national laws as well as appropriateness of material
  
  

My Reflection

I found this article to be very helpful and thought provoking. I like how it describes the present context and technology tools before going into how educators can use them. Richardson provides many great examples of how these tools can be used in the classroom and to change the curriculum. The ideas he gives readers offer me a great source for starting to apply the use of technology in the classroom. Yet, with those applications of technology comes increased responsibility.

Our responsibility as educators is to think and collaborate to answer some tough questions. Richardson essentially asks, “What is literacy?” and provides some good ideas for how I can restructure my ideas of literacy as being more than just reading and writing.

Also, he suggests an “open content” model. I think this is an ideal that cannot be fully realized in the classroom; there are problems. Students are not automatically creators because it takes work. I find that they need A LOT of guidance so to think that they could create on their own seems a bit far fetched. I think that this is the case especially when students collaborate and when they use technology.

Finally, Richardson notes that one of our goals should now be to lead students to questioning and evaluating sources. This, I believe, is the goal of education in and of itself regardless of whether it’s technology-filled or traditionoal. Evaluation being on the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy, i.e., the most complex task, most students can only begin to perform these tasks. It’s not that they are not capable, but they are just not ready yet. That said, it is a great goal to shoot for.