best of the blogs.

This section presents several significant issues discussed on the educator blog community of Ed-Tech Insider. According to long-time classroom teacher Anne Davis, the reason she is hooked on blogs is the teacher-student and student-student discussions that come out of blogging. Everyone is connected to others. The learning arena is giving students a space to use their voices and see results. Students see reasons to write. She is becoming a better listener and she just keeps on learning. Tim Lauer argues against a criticism by a librarian against the editorial methods of online reference site Wikipedia. Pointing children to a published traditional source will not do anything to ensure they gain the critical thinking skills they will need as they leave school. The results of a survey of U.S. high school students on their views about the First Amendment were disconcerting, according to Will Richardson. Nearly 75 percent of children erroneously think flag burning is illegal. Half of them believe the government can censor the Internet. The most troubling aspect of the survey results is the view that the First Amendment goes to far in the rights it guarantees. This is the irony of the explosion of participatory journalism.