Article Review: The Educators Guide to the Read/Write Web

The Educators Guide to the Read/Write Web
by Will Richardson

As the Internet has changed from a place where information is only gather to a place where information is also published and shared, author Richardson suggests that classroom teachers will feel the change and have to move with this change.

• He suggests that a blog be used as a vehicle to draw out critical thinking, reading and writing skills.
• Work becomes more collaborative if a wiki is intertwined into the curriculum.
• Using social bookmarking “enables teachers to leverage the collaborative efforts of like-minded professionals to mine information on the Internet.

All of this information changes that students are no longer writing for an audience of one, their teacher; rather, the “awareness of even a small audience can significantly change the way the students approaches writing or other school assignments.

This new technology means that education is changing to learn how to effectively use the technology and then teach students how to use it. This means students need to always be thinking critically about the source or other information that they currently have on a topic to determine if the information that they are reading is accurate or not. Students cannot not passively accept what is given. Richardson states, “..The teacher's role shifts from a content expert to a guide who shows students how to find and evaluate online resources, communicate with experts whom they encounter online, and publish their own creations that result from such encounters. Classroom teachers should become content creators in their own right so that they can model appropriate use of these tools.”