Of all of the technologies that we have learned about, I believe wikis will be used the most. I hope to use professional development time to produce wiki pages that can be used for my 8th grade unit on cultures, and redevelop my family unit so that students can create a wiki about their family heritage. I think students will find interest in other’s cultures and traditions. I will ask students to read their classmates pages and post a response to what they have learned. For the culture unit, I hope to have students post their gathered information from the country that they researched, so that it may be shared with others. These pages can also be added to by other students as the year moves on. In my 8th grade nutrient unit, I have students create an advertisement for a nutrient. It would be neat to have the students create a podcast for their nutrient and add sounds and effects to their work.
Blogs could be used as more of a discussion board, I’m not sure how i would implement them yet. Perhaps I would have students log on and reflect after a cooking lab. With the restructuring of the 9th grade class, I’m not completely sure exactly what I am teaching yet, however I am sure there are many ways that I could implement blogs, wiki or podcasts. We do talk about the 7 habits of highly effective teens. Groups could be assigned a particular habit and on a wiki they could explain what the habit is and why it is important. Students could also develp a wiki that lists organization methods, and ways to beat stress!

The only bumps in the road I feel I might run into is the access problem. Being able to explain how to create a wiki, how to post, etc is going to take time before being able to actually create a work in progress. I hope that there is less of an access problem in the future so that we are able to use technology more freely. From time to time there might be a few questions that arise that would require tech staff to help, however I do not see that as being a problem. I’m not exactly sure how i will set up the wikis, or what will work best, however I will have to determine that by trial and error.