Blogs, Wikis, and Smartboards

The purpose of a blog is inform about one or many topics. They are usually maintained by one individual and contain comentary that visitors may leave comments on. They combine text links and photos to make a sort of online journal. Blogs could be used in education to create an ongoing journal of knowledge that would remain in the cloud. If this was done in place of note taking, a students notes would never be lost and they would be accessable for years to come without taking up harddrive space.
A wiki is a website that any person may create and/or edit the interlinked webpages. I would not use wikis in my classroom because anyone may edit them and therefore are an unreliable source of information. A blog differs from a wiki because wikis are edited by many different people whereas a blog is maintained by one source. Although they both use links to other websites they are very defferent. A blog is much more likey to express an opinion rather than present information as factual like wikis.
A smartboards purpose is to engage a classroom and make it more interactive and efficient. It is, in essence, multiple whiteboards. Much like a computer, it is capable of managing multiple windows at once. The touch screen technology makes it function similar to an ordinary whiteboard. I would definately use a smartboard in my classroom. The technology involved seems to spark an interest in kids, and therefore helps them to focus better. The many different apps avaliable for a smartboard would make it a usefull teaching tool.