This week we talked about Blogs, but more specifically RSS Readers. I have several ideas for incorporating blogging in the classroom(s) which I talked about in last week's post but combining some of those ideas with the use of an RSS Reader makes them much more powerful. The obvious way to incorporate RSS Readers would be to use them to help monitor multiple information sources effectively. There have been many cool things that I have given up because of how much time they take up. I can't imagine trying to keep up with more than like 5 blogs at a time by trying to remember to visit them every day or even every week. It just isn't feasible and even if you were able to incorporate it into your routine it wouldn't be an effective use of time. By using an RSS Reader you can read more content from more sources in a fraction of the time. By simply scanning or skimming the headlines or first few sentences of each blog you subscribe to, you can quickly determine what might be useful reading. It is like having an electronic personal assistant that presents you with informational choices that you can pick and choose from. You can also mark things as something you'd like to read at a later time.
One idea that I really liked was the concept of having students use an RSS Reader to do research on certain topics. This strategy would direct students to resources that they may never have been exposed to by doing your good ole Google search. If the topic is a current event or recent hot topic then this strategy becomes even more advantageous. Not only will the research be current but the information flow will be ongoing. You wouldn't find that type of research any other way.
The last idea that really stuck with me was the suggestion that a teacher could use an RSS Reader as an effective way to monitor individual student blogs. Up until now I have been racking my brain on how (and who) would be responsible for such a task when we establish individual student blogs. I was planning on making the classroom teacher (Literature teacher, for example) responsible for administering the blogs but I was dreading telling them about the micro-management part. Having the teacher use an RSS Reader to accomplish this will make the teacher hate me a little bit less. I hope.
One thing that struck me is that if you have a student who is in middle or high school they could potentially have a different blog for every class....making it hard for them to keep track of everything. Perhaps having the student keep their own blog that is used for multiple classes would be an easier way of keeping track of their work.
ReplyDeleteI know My Big School and Edmodo allow the student to enroll and keep track of multiple classes, but tools like Blogger are very simplistic and would require the student to create a new blog for every class. Not impossible, but definitely something to think about.