Blogging and RSS Feeds, what a yummy combination to end our course blogging with. I love food analogies so I will use one with these two applications of Web 2.0 tools. If RSS is the nutrition you take in then Blogging is the energy you give out. If you are able to have a well balanced diet, in other words, decipher relevant information from irrelevant, then the energy you release may be used for productive, informative, knowledgeable and creative purposes.
Throughout this course and others I have been able to track my learning through blogging and it has been an excellent tool to use in order to reflect on past ideas, see how my experiences have shaped my views on information literacy and understand how and why I have made changes to the way I create a learning environment for myself and the students I have come to teach.
Blogging is a great medium for students to do the same. Not only does it give them a public voice but also allows them to see how far they have developed and what influenced their learning along the way. It is a great way to record all of their achievements, including the difficulties they may have encountered and how they came to resolve these issues and complete particular goals that they set for themselves. Using Web 2.0 tools can enhance learning; it is a place where students can create a unique and individual space and can view all the effort and thought they have released in order to succeed. It is also collaborative and students are able to view and learn from other students and contribute their thoughts in order to gather more information, which enhances learning. Most importantly blogging gets your students reading and writing more and thinking about reading and writing more. It allows students to organize their thoughts in visual ways, but emphasizes the use of language in order to express themselves in order to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences.
I really enjoyed watching a few of the videos presented on ‘Langwitches Blog – The Magic of Learning’ at: http://langwitches.org/blog/2011/02/06/quality-commenting-video-by-third-graders/. It is amazing how young you can begin to teach these skills and how effectively students will learn them when using technology. Becoming more proficient in using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom increases students’ sense of accomplishment and generates more interest because it is a connection to the real world or the real digital world. The interviews on tips for creating quality commenting on blogs was so well put together and you can see that students were enjoying what they were presenting as well as learning a great deal about the essentials of blogging.
Moving onto the consumption of RSS Feeds, like any good meal there are essential steps that need to be taken in order to create a nutritious and delicious dish, “Twenty-First Century readers and writers need to manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information,” (NCTE, 2008) like chefs need to manage, analyze and synthesize good quality ingredients when preparing a meal. As we become better at developing a “keen eye for quickly spotting the most relevant and interesting information” (Richardson, 2010, pg.72,73) our students will also realize that this is “another one of those essential skills that they will have to develop in order to flourish.” (Richardson, 2010, pg.73) RSS is a great way to begin learning these skills and I have noticed since I began using it that my skills in choosing good feeds have gotten better and I have become more efficient in reviewing feeds. I have been using Google Reader and upon first using it I was overwhelmed by the number of posts that would continually stream onto my page. I slowly learned to search out key words and phrases that connected me to the information I wanted or thought would be most useful. Of course I still click on feeds that aren’t great but can move quickly beyond them. I really like the way you can organize your feeds by creating folders with various topics and you can add your own personal tags or keywords to explain personal relevance.
Richardson also has some great ideas for classroom use where you can create an RSS feed of your students’ weblogs (if they have them), and it is a means to scan through all the new information that they have posted which can save you a lot of time instead of having to view them all individually. Another amazing idea was to be able to get RSS feeds on a particular subject that students are investigating for an assignment or research project. Richardson uses the avian flu as an example and students could create a feed where all new information on the flu could be sent to them through RSS.
I also found a great website called, “Information Avalanche Rescue -- RSS Feeds in the Classroom” http://eduscapes.com/sessions/rss/. This site lays out all you need to know about RSS and has some great class activities to walk students through the important elements of using RSS feeds effectively.
It has been a rewarding experience working with all of these Web 2.0 tools and I can see how many of them can be used to enhance students’ abilities to work their way through finding information and using it in the best way possible. These tools allow students to enter a whole new world of possibilities and teach them skills that they will need in order to be successful in any path they may take. I hope to keep learning with the students I teach and provide new and innovative ways to challenge their thinking and abilities to create delicious ways of presenting their ideas, knowledge and individuality.
References:
National Council of Teachers of English. (2008). The definition of twenty-first century literacies. Retrieved October 9, 2009, from http://www.ncte.org/ governence/literacies.
Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other powerful web tools for the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2010.
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