Jamie’s Blog

The lesson that I taught was one of the few culminating activities to my fifth grade Mystery unit. Students were expected to take what they have learned about mysteries, over the past few weeks, to create their own mystery. The main things that were learned were as follows:

• What are the elements of a mystery?
• What is a blog?
• What is peer editing and how is it done appropriately?

Students were to then take the learned information and write their own mystery (using our classroom blog) that incorporates all of the required mystery elements. The underlying assumptions in regards to this lesson were that my students could take everything they learned and apply it to a well formatted mystery. I hoped also to also instill in my students that writing can go beyond just using a pencil and paper and hopefully that creates more excitement in my classroom to write.

The affordances for how the information was represented were that the vast majority of the material that was presented was information that my students had already learned. This should help my students in preparing to write their mystery story. The main constraint that my students faced was actually learning how to post writing assignments and comments to a blog. This is new information that was to be learned and one class period just wasn’t enough time to allow for my students to experiment with blogging and to get use to this new method of writing.

During my lesson taught learning took place in many forms. Most was through the constructivist approach in which students were to take the information that they already acquired to create their mystery story. Even when I introduced blogging to my students, most of them had no idea what a blog was, but they knew how to instant message and email so the concept really came easy to them as they based it on things that they already knew.

    Behaviorism came into play with the fact that my students were required to include each element of a mystery into their stories. Students were required to know and describe each one of the elements and were even tested on the elements in the past. To make their mystery complete, each element would have to be obviously stated in their mystery story.

Social Constructivism theory is clearly evident in my lesson through my student’s requirement to respond to their peer’s mysteries. This is where the lesson got fun! Once my students have posted their mysteries to the classroom blog, students were then required to read through their classmate’s stories and try to solve one another’s mystery. The were then asked to post what they thought to be the solution of each mystery read on our classroom blog using what they have learned about mystery elements. They may ask questions and formulate their responses based on one another’s comments.

The main reason I created this lesson was to meet the needs of the various learning styles in my classroom. Many of my students struggle with expressing their thoughts and words onto paper, however almost every student loves being on the computer. What a better way to increase a students desire to write than to use a computer and the internet. This lesson was not something that was completely new. Most of the content had been presented over the past few weeks. This lesson was more of a culminating lesson and activity with an integration of technology.

In order for my lesson to be a success, teachers need to know what is expected of them through Michigan’s Language Arts curriculum standards. Teachers and learners both need to understand the basics of what makes up a mystery, how to peer edit, and they need to understand each step of the writing process. The biggest demand that’s placed on teachers is the assumption that all students know how to access and navigate the internet. This could become a struggle and make the lesson a bit more challenging.

During this lesson, students were assessed on three things: Their blog posting, the writing process, and their responses to at least three of their classmate’s posted mysteries.

With regards to their blog posting, the main things that I was looking for were all of the elements of a mystery included in their story and each student’s use of the writing process. Students were given a rubric to follow which is the same rubric that I used to assess my students work.

Technology was implemented in this lesson and is used as a writing and communication tool. The advantages that technology holds for this role is that it really motivated my students to write and respond to their classmates postings. The disadvantages were that there were not any editing tools for my students to use and that it was more time consuming for me to actually monitor what my students post, comment on, and respond to on the classroom blog. The unique contribution that the technology makes in facilitating learning is that it exposes my students to yet another way to voice and present their thoughts rather than just using a pencil and paper.

I expected my students to become more motivated to write with the use of blogging in this lesson. My students were so excited to experiment with our classroom blog once I introduced it to them. The biggest downfall was that I had to give my students some extra time to “play” with the blog prior to giving them their assignment, but it was nice to see their enthusiasm. The main questions that students asked were on how to edit their papers using the blog. I encouraged them to type their mysteries out using Word first, edit their stories in Word, and then copy and past their mystery into the blog.

My students could really relate to the use of blogging. Once I showed them what a blog was, they instantly related blogging to instant messaging and emailing and caught on very quickly.

I was overjoyed with my student’s excitement to write using a blog and I loved how they were also eager to try to solve their classmate’s mysteries.

In regards to the content that was taught, my students were so eager to start writing that they didn’t focus as much on making sure that the elements of a mystery were incorporated into their stories. I did read through many of the posted stories and was happy to discover that many students did actually include most of the elements of a mystery in their stories, but without any awareness of doing so.

I do think my students made good sense of the presented content, but being as the concept of blogging was new to them, they were so excited about using it, they didn’t focus on the required content of writing a mystery as much as I would have like them to.

Digital Storytelling

Jamie Maurus’ Podcast For CEP 800

            Before discussing the ways in which educational research should be evaluated, I feel that it is important that you understand what educational research is. Educational Research includes many different studies that attempt to better understand and improve the learning and educational process. These studies include, but are not limited to research on topics such as teaching, classroom management, psychology, testing, child development, cognitive science, etc.

            When you receive an opportunity to evaluate educational research you need to make sure the research has specific components. I believe the main part to evaluating educational research is making sure that the question that is being researched is inquiry based and that the question is being researched through observation. If we can’t observe something, we can’t research it. We can tell a lot about observing someone or something in their natural realm. I know that we, as educators,  do this quite often without even knowing that we are evaluating research. Especially when it comes to evaluating a student’s which whom we believe to have something that is impairing their ability to learn in our classroom.

Next, you need to actually  research specific literature that is relevant to your topic, making sure that what is being researched is scientifically based. When you begin the research process, most likely you are not the first person to research your chosen topic. There is no such thing as a single research study and your research should build on somebody’s previous work. You need to make sure that you have the statistics and information to back your question up. Similar to getting hired within a school district, references are key to reliable scientific  research. You then need to have your research critiqued to make sure your research is actually viable and scientifically based.

 As educators, we are exposed to many claims about things that we could use and benefit from if integrated into our curriculum (e.g. textbook, sensory, and lesson plan claims). It is important that we take the time to actually assess the claims of research so that we know and understand what research ideas are actually scientifically based because, believe it or not, not everything is.

I am not going to lie, when I started this class I was very overwhelmed. Everything looked so much more in depth than what was required of my fist two classes. To me, this class wound up being a continuation and combination of CEP 810 and 811. I have learned that teaching strategies are much more effective when technology is integrated. I have also learned a lot more about web based technologies. As a media specialist, when I heard the term web based technology, I instantly thought of “gaming.” In actuality, web based technologies go above and beyond gaming. I have learned that these technologies include Web 2.0, wiki’s (which I knew nothing about until this class), and freeware. I also learned that there are also various forms of instructional software. Again, educational games are all that I was familiar with. Instructional software also goes above and beyond gaming. In addition to educational games there are Tutorials, Drill and Practice, Discovery/ Exploratory Environments/ Problem Solving, and Simulations that are available to utilize in the classroom. All of which benefit the students and enhance what students are to learn.

      Integrating different web based technologies into my curriculum really allowed me to see how my students levels of interest, in what is to be learned, are enhanced when technology is involved. I now understand that my research should be conducted prior to coming up with a plan and implementing what I believe to be effective resources. Through trial and error I have learned what does and does not work within my school and district and I see that students feel more at ease and show more excitement when writing using web based technologies and this really excites me.

      I have learned more through the classes I have taken so far then I did in my first graduate program. Everyday I feel that I have gone above and beyond the technology goals that I have set for myself. My eyes are then opened up to new and advanced technologies and I instantly set new goals for myself and I love it! I feel like a sponge and love growing as a media specialist.

      I now have many new goals for myself. One major goal that I now have is the implementation of a classroom blog (which hopefully will lead to a school wide blog). I plan on implementing this goal at the beginning of the next school year. Along with this blog, I have implemented a new class that I will be teaching next year, Broadcasting. This class will go hand in hand with my blog and will allow my students to take ownership in our school’s announcements and broadcast them through my blog. I am very excited to take on these new goals as I am a life long technology learner! Technology is what I am meant to teach and one day, I hope to receive the opportunity to teach a grad class like this to adults who want to further their education in the area of technology.

                When I first saw the word “TechQuest” I was a bit overwhelmed. However, it was nice that the TechQuest was broken up into small sections. The next time I receive the opportunity to implement a TechQuest into my curriculum I would do things a little bit different. The main thing that I would change is that I would conduct the research for my TechQuest prior to coming up with a plan for it. It took quite a bit of trial and error with my TechQuest for me to discover what did and did not work within my classroom. Initially, I was hoping to create a classroom wiki.  After planning everything out, I couldn’t find a wiki site that was not blocked by the school district that I work for.  I then had to completely change up my plan to implementing a blog instead of a wiki. Once I changed my TechQuest topic to blogs, I was a bit frustrated when I discovered that the vast majority of blogs required students to have an email address. The whole project just felt like a lot of work. After days of research, I did find a classroom blogging site in which an email address was not required.

                I feel that I introduced blogging to my students too late into the school year. I believe that blogging is an ongoing process and can be incorporated into the curriculum in many ways and utilized in all subject areas. Next school year I plan on introducing blogging to my fourth and fifth grade students in early October. I also plan on working hand-in-hand with the classroom teacher. I believe that in order for this project to be 100% successful, collaboration between my student’s classroom teacher and I is a necessity. This is one thing that my project was lacking this year. The classroom teacher would be responsible for the language arts aspect of this project. They would also be responsible for assigning writing topics that are curriculum based.  I, then, would be responsible for the technology and blog integration and the monitoring of the student blogs. I would also make sure that students are commenting on their peer’s blogs appropriately and constructively.

My fingers are crossed that next year’s blogging runs a bit more smoothly and is more educationally based. Again, I didn’t introduce this TechQuest until May, but I almost feel as if my students, this year, looked at blogging as more of a tool to instant message their peers. They neglected to see their blog as a learning tool. When I pull up and read my students blogs, I see a lot of clip art and pointless conversations that are not school related. This upsets me a great deal. I cannot put all of the blame on my students though, as I did not monitor the blogs the way I feel I should have. I am hoping that the changes I make next year result in blogging that increase and improve my student’s writing across the curriculum.

Literature Review

The first question that everyone asks is what is reading Fluency? The National Assessment of educational Progress (NAEP) fluency is defined as the ease or “naturalness” of reading where students have the strong and natural abilities to group and/or phrase words as revealed through intonation, stress, and pauses (White, 1995). These students can adhere to the author’s syntax, or rules of language, and they are extremely expressive when they read orally. Fluency is more than reading fast, its reading at an appropriate rate, with good expression, and praising that reflects an evident understanding of the text being read (National Institute of Child Health and Development, 2000).

            Problems in reading fluency are becoming more and more evident every day. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about one third of the United States’ eighth grade students read at or above a fluent or proficient level. With reading fluency problems, come reading comprehension problems. Children have attention spans that are only so big. If he or she is reading the words on a page at a slow pace, there is no way that they will remember what he or she has read, much less, make connections using the information they read about. However, reading fluency ranges from child to child. A third grade student may read a word and instantly recognize it again with greater speed, then one of my seventh grade students need twenty or more exposures to even so much as recognize the word. Spelling instruction also fosters the development of reading fluency. Through the teaching of spelling, children receive examples of how letters represent the various sounds of speech which helps them to develop a quicker sense of word recognition (Moats, 2001).

            Fluency is a very difficult concept to comprehend. There is not one set definition for reading fluency, however, it makes reading and comprehension seem almost effortless. With fluency come a number of key components. Fluent readers must have a vocabulary of high-frequency words, graphphonic skills, and strategies for accurately and quickly decoding new words.  Fluent readers can also accurately and automatically decode words without use of their cognitive resources (Worthy & Broaddus, 2001/02,)

.           Fluency is key to a child’s success because after elementary school, students are expected to read, and comprehend what was read, independently. The problem with this is that the traditional reading fluency strategies taught in the elementary grades is not doing the trick. Dedicated fluency instruction is rarely ever found in classrooms anymore. The only time students ever read out loud is when there are unrehearsed, whole group lessons where students orally read textbooks and/or novels. Students who develop reading fluency, generally develop it on their own (Worthy & Broaddus, 2001/02).

            One of the most important things that a school has to do is to clearly distinguish two main goals for student literacy. These goals are learning to decode and learning to comprehend (or as literacy experts would put it, distinguishing the difference in Learning to Read and Reading to Learn).

            Middle schools are beginning to provide specialized reading programs for students who do read below grade level, however these programs provide a main focus on the mechanics of reading and literacy and do not pay much, if any, attention to reading fluency and comprehension strategies. Another problem with these programs is the lack of motivation, involvement, interest, and engagement of the students because their lack of reading and fluency strategies have brought on extreme frustration in their literacy and language arts classes (Wise, 2005, Vol. 14).

            Reading fluency is thought to be multidimensional. The first dimension focuses on the importance of accuracy of word decoding, the second dimension focuses on quick and automatic recognition of words within text, and the third dimension focuses on meaningful and expressive interpretation of text (Risinski, 2006). There are many other fluency dimensions including word phrasing, reading smoothness, and reading pace. Each dimension is directly related to reading comprehension (Risinski, 2003).

            The ability to measure students reading fluency levels is a key component to successful fluency teaching. The assessments themselves must resemble ways in which fluency is defined and they must provide consistent measures of fluency and won’t vary due to imperfections within the assessment. Reading fluency assessments should be quick and easy. If they are not, teachers may not find time to use them or may rush through them producing inconsistent scores (Risinski, 2006).

            Reading fluency assessments consist of three distinct components. The first of the three components is decoding accuracy, the second is the ability of readers to decode words in text with minimal use of cognitive resources, and the third component is prosody or the ability of readers to appropriately use phrasing and expression (Risinski, 2006).

            Middle school students who are not fluent in reading will often read with appropriate instruction. Middle school students have experienced this failure (or feeling of failure and frustration) at an early age so they must now be convinced that a new investment and effort of energy will be worthwhile. It is recommended that students, who do not have strong reading fluency skills, receive a minimum of two hours of reading instruction a day, but in the real world of teaching this is not possible. There are many reading fluency strategies that could be incorporated into a general, middle school, curriculum and be taught in an hour’s time one to two days a week. By implementing these new strategies, students reading fluency levels began to sky rocket.  

            Before reading, students should be taught to preview, predict, and set a purpose for what they are going to read. Students should be given class time to skim thorough the text or book they are going to read to make their own predictions. Students should also receive clarification on any vocabulary words that they do not understand (Garriott & Jones, 2005).

            During reading, a good strategy to enforce is partner reading. With partner reading, the main goal is to practice fluency and teach students to independently apply reading strategies that allow them to understand and comprehend what they are reading.  Other strategies that may be implemented during reading include choral reading (reading short passages out loud in unison), echo reading (reading out loud after you, the teacher models correct phrasing), readers theater (allowing small groups of students to perform a particular text), and annotated text (students highlight, underline, or jot notes down on sticky notes, the important or “key” parts of the text they are reading) (Garriott & Jones, 2005).

            After reading, students should be given time to have a partner discussion that would give students an opportunity to clarify the meaning of the text they recently read.    

            In the recent years, new reading strategies have been developed to assist students in reading fluency growth.

            One strategy that has shown growth among poor readers is the Repeated Reading Strategy. With this strategy, students are asked to read a given a short passage of a text that contains word that are recognizable to the students. They are asked to read this passage several times until a fluency rate can be determined. Once a fluency rate is determined, the students then begin a new passage. Each new passage read by student’s increases in reading level. This is done until the students reach their reading frustration level. Once they reach this point, they are given a number of short passages that they must master before preceding to the next level (Mastropieri, Leinare, & Scruggs, 1999, vol. 34).

            Another strategy that is thought to help students increase their reading fluency levels is Class Wide Peer Tutoring. How this strategy works is that one half of the students in class are reading a particular text at one time to a partner. The other half of the class is actively engaged in monitoring the other halves performance. Each of the halves then switch roles, where the monitoring half is now reading to their partner. This is a one-on-one strategy (Mastropieri, Leinare, & Scruggs, 1999, vol. 34).

            Computer-assisted instruction can also be used to practice, promote, and increase reading fluency. There are many programs that can assist students at all grade levels. The program mentioned in the article Strategies to Increase Reading Fluency is the Hint and Hunt program. This program helps students to recognize words at their grade level. This program also acts as a game that calculates and monitors students reading speed and monitors their reading accuracy (Mastropieri, Leinare, & Scruggs, 1999, vol. 34).

            Guided oral reading and independent silent reading are the two traditional strategies that teachers have been implementing in their classroom for the past five years. These strategies show an increase in students reading fluency, however the increase is not shown at as much of a rapid rate (National Institute of Child and Human Development, 2000).

            The bottom line is that all language arts teachers should be educated on reading fluency strategies that meet the needs of students at all grade levels. Most are only taught reading fluency strategies for early to mid elementary grades. Teaching students the right reading fluency strategies, their fluency levels and rates in increase dramatically and students will wonder and ask why they were allowed to get so far in school without being taught to read (Moats, 2001).

Annotated Bibliography

Lyon, G. Reid. “Difficulties With Fluency.” Reading Rockets 1997.27 May 2009.   http://www.readingrockets.org/articles/222. Lyons research states that While the ability to read words accurately is a necessary skill in learning to read, the speed at which this is done becomes a critical factor in ensuring that children understand what they read. As one child recently remarked, “If you don’t ride a bike fast enough, you fall off.” Likewise, if the reader does not recognize words quickly enough, the meaning will be lost.

Mastropieri, M. A., Leinart, A., & Scruggs, T. E. , “Strategies to Increase Reading

Fluency.”    Intervention in  School and Clinic 34 (1999) 278-283. 25 May 2009.

This article discusses new reading strategies that have been developed to assist students in reading fluency growth. One strategy that has shown growth among poor readers is the Repeated Reading Strategy. With this strategy, students are asked to read a given a short passage of a text that contains word that are recognizable to the students. They are asked to read this passage several times until a fluency rate can be determined. Once a fluency rate is determined, the students then begin a new passage. Each new passage read by student’s increases in reading level. This is done until the students reach their reading frustration level. Once they reach this point, they are given a number of short passages that they must master before preceding to the next level.

Another strategy that is thought to help students increase their reading fluency levels is Class Wide Peer Tutoring. How this strategy works is that one half of the students in class are reading a particular text at one time to a partner. The other half of the class is actively engaged in monitoring the other halves performance. Each of the halves then switch roles, where the monitoring half is now reading to their partner. This is a one-on-one strategy. Computer-assisted instruction can also be used to practice, promote, and increase reading fluency. There are many programs that can assist students at all grade levels. The program mentioned in the article Strategies to Increase Reading Fluency is the Hint and Hunt program. This program helps students to recognize words at their grade level. This program also acts as a game that calculates and monitors students reading speed and monitors their reading accuracy.

Moats, L.C.. “When Older Student’s Can’t Read.” Educational Leadership (2001): 36-40.  

Moats claims that problems in reading fluency are becoming more and more evident every day. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about one third of the United States’ eighth grade students read at or above a fluent or proficient level. With reading fluency problems, come reading comprehension problems. Children have attention spans that are only so big. If he or she is reading the words on a page at a slow pace, there is no way that they will remember what he or she has read, much less, make connections using the information they read about. However, reading fluency ranges from child to child. A third grade student may read a word and instantly recognize it again with greater speed, then one of my seventh grade students need twenty or more exposures to even so much as recognize the word. Spelling instruction also fosters the development of reading fluency. Through the teaching of spelling, children receive examples of how letters represent the various sounds of speech which helps them to develop a quicker sense of word recognition. This article makes great points in regards to the importance of fluency in the upper grades.

“National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.” What Works in Fluency  Instruction (2000)     26 May 2009. <http://readingrockets.org/articles/72>.

The National Assessment of educational Progress (NAEP) defines fluency as the ease or “naturalness” of reading where students have the strong and natural abilities to group and/or phrase words as revealed through intonation, stress, and pauses (White, 1995). These students can adhere to the author’s syntax, or rules of language, and they are extremely expressive when they read orally. Fluency is more than reading fast, its reading at an appropriate rate, with good expression, and praising that reflects an evident understanding of the text being read.

Risinski, Timothy. The Fluent Reader. New York: Scholastic, 2003.

This book discusses How there are many fluency dimensions including word phrasing, reading smoothness, and reading pace. Each dimension is directly related to reading comprehension which explains why there are so many adults who are struggling readers today.

White, Sheida. “How Fluently Do Our Children Read? .” Reading Rockets 2007.1 Jun 2009. <http://www.readingrockets.org/articles/104>. White explains and defines reading fluency as the ease or “naturalness” of reading where students have the strong and natural abilities to group and/or phrase words as revealed through intonation, stress, pauses, and interjecting a sense of expression. White also gives examples of fluency assessment within this article and studies and test results of upper elementary student’s fluency, accuracy, and reading rates.

Wise, B. “Improving Adolescent Literacy.” Middle Matters 14. September 2005.1 Jun 2009. Wise states that middle schools are beginning to provide specialized reading programs for students who do read below grade level, however these programs provide a main focus on the mechanics of reading and literacy and do not pay much, if any, attention to reading fluency and comprehension strategies. Another problem with these programs is the lack of motivation, involvement, interest, and engagement of the students because their lack of reading and fluency strategies have brought on extreme frustration in their literacy and language arts classes. This is why the implementation of reading fluency needs to be implemented on a regular basis starting in and continuing all the way through elementary

Worthy, Jo, Broaddus, Karen. “Fluency beyond the Primary Grades: From Group Performance to Silent, Independent Reading.” Reading Teacher 55Dec.-Jan. 2001-2002 334-343.1 Jun 2009.

            This article demonstrates how engaging, effective oral fluency practice can be part of daily reading instruction and how this  instruction and practice can help to develop independence and understanding in silent reading. Describes how the approach includes explicit teacher modeling and teacher-guided time for group and independent oral and silent reading practice in materials from all areas of the curriculum. Worth and Broaddus state that fluency is a very difficult concept to comprehend. There is not one set definition for reading fluency, however, it makes reading and comprehension seem almost effortless. With fluency come a number of key components. Fluent readers must have a vocabulary of high-frequency words, graphphonic skills, and strategies for accurately and quickly decoding new words.  Fluent readers can also accurately and automatically decode words without use of their cognitive resources.

My First Podcasting

         Upon researching information in regards to my blog, I found many resources from teachers who are in favor of classroom blogs.  I first began researching general information on incorporating blogs into the classroom using Google and Google Scholar. It was no surprise to me that the vast majority of the results came up in a blog form. There were so many positive explanations and ideas for incorporating blogs into the classroom, but all of my search results were very broad. I thought about my research and decided that having a classroom Wiki would fulfill two requirements at one time and allow me to utilize blogs in the classroom as well. I decided to change my search to Wikis in the classroom. This search topic came up with many more results and reasoning’s for incorporating blogs into the classroom.

Using a wiki in the classroom gives students the opportunity to write in a collaborative environment, while at the same time they are able to:

·         Learn from others. Collaborative writing allows students to learn from one another – both in terms of viewing each other’s content but also by seeing the quality of other students’ work. In a traditional classroom, a student writes a paper, the teacher grades it, and then returns it to the student. Other students rarely have the opportunity to see and therefore learn from the information in that paper. Seeing other students’ work on a continuous basis can cause a student to evaluate his or her own work and see how it compares in quality. The comparison may cause the student to raise his or her work to a higher level.

·         Develop a higher level of critical thinking. Students can develop critical thinking skills by critiquing other students’ information and learning how to defend their views when critiqued by other students.

·         Deepen investigative skills. Working collaboratively on one document can encourage a student to do more investigative work. When information is critiqued as incorrect or underdeveloped, the student is encouraged to do additional research to respond to the critiques.

·         Develop skills for negotiating conflict and facilitating effective teamwork. In writing and working collaboratively with wikis, students must create and agree on the structures, forms, and methods that are necessary to accomplish their collaborative task. Wikis not only build constructive communities of writers, but also accommodate differences among members of these communities, which in turn can allow all voices to contribute to the conversation.”

·         Build a class community. Working together in a collaborative process helps students get to know one another and build relationships.  (Boston College 2009)

      I decided to refine my search as to using wiki’s to encourage writing in the classroom. I was very impressed with the search results. All of the results basically stated the same thing, that wiki’s could be used for students to work on writing projects collaboratively. Unlike blogging, though, wiki’s generate more of an interest in writing for students than traditional writing assignments. This high interest in writing is also known to benefit students who have learning disabilities.

     Students are able to edit each other’s work, comment on inaccurate information and share their ideas. Again, writing for an actual audience may help motivate reluctant writers and improve writing skills. This method of incorporating writing and technology into the classroom not only provides students with learning disabilities valuable feedback on their writing but it can also give them a platform for sharing something they know a great deal about. Many students with learning disabilities may be depressed because of their struggles within school. Incorporating a wiki into the classroom could boost a student’s self-esteem and help them to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

     I decided to take my research one step further and search wikis to increase writing among boys in the classroom. This search topic seemed to be too vague as everything that came up touched on the positive impact that wikis in the classroom would have on boys and girls in general.

      Whenever I conduct research I tend to lean toward Google and Yahoo. Believe it or not, I am not really familiar with many other search engines. So I Google searched Search Engines to see what was out there and to see if I could get other results when researching wikis to increase writing among boys in the classroom. Every search engine that I tried (Dogpile, Ask, and MSN.) gave me the same results as Google and Yahoo and even linked me to these search engines.

Since my past searched were so redundant, I decided to try out some databases. I first tried MEL (Michigan Electronic Library). I began searching wikis in the classroom, classroom wikis, wikis+ classroom, and classroom + wikis. Frustration began to take over, as no results were displayed that matched my search results.

I took it upon myself to conduct two more searches. I first searched the MSU library (http://magic.lib.msu.edu/).  I began searching wikis in the classroom. I expected nothing, but so many results came up. However, I quickly discovered that all of my search results were books that had to be checked out on the main campus.

          I then went to the ERIC Database. I was amazed with my results. I searched, “Wikis in the classroom.” There were so many articles that came up. What I liked about using the ERIC Database is that I was able to read the abstract of each of the articles beforehand. Everything that came up proved that my research was worthwhile. Most articles stated that the problem with wikis in the classroom was that teachers looked at wikis and did not understand why people would want to have them in the classroom as they would be more work and take up more time in their day. They did not look at how wikis benefit students, how they engage students in a collaborative learning process and environment. Those students would no longer complete journal assignments. They would instead engage themselves in thoughtful discussions that would continue even after a lesson ends.

I learned a lot about implementing wikis in the classroom and am very excited to implement this next week during Journalism Club. We have our last publication to produce and I think the students are going to like this. Judging by the response, I will, hopefully be utilizing a classroom wiki on a regular basis next school year.