RSS

In my efforts to understand Really Simple Syndication, I typed in a few topics.  I can’t say I know exactly what I am doing, but I am enjoying playing around with Google Reader/RSS feeds.  RSS feeds have really opened my eyes to the many possibilities teachers and students can use to acquire information about a topic.  This would be perfect for my fifth and sixth graders who conduct research for their Big6 project.  According to Richardson, students can actually create RSS feeds that would bring new information about a topic to his or her aggregator as soon as it is published (pg. 79).  The RSS feed is doing all the research and it’s up-to-date.  (This feature would have saved me hours looking for articles while in school.) Now, that our students have acquired information about a topic, it is our job to teach them to skim and scan the information, analyze, and synthesize their readings to prepare them for the 21^st century literacies. However, the issue still remains that there are not enough computers /technology in our schools and not all students have access to a computer and/or Internet when at home.

Online Collaborative Inquiry: Classroom Blogging Ventures and Multiple Literacies

The article written by Judy Arzt's titled Online Collabortive Inquiry: Classroom Blogging Ventures and Multiple Literacies is an informative atricle for teachers who are thinking about using blogging in the classroom. Arzt stated, "Blogging engages students in online conversations, design of multimodal compositions, opportunities to meet and collaborate with students from around the world, ways to reflect on classroom learning, and acquisition of digital citizenship etiquette. There is no denying we live in a global world. Whether students use blogging to reach this world by reading and commenting on other students’ blogs or by creating and maintaining their own blogs and inviting others into their world, they benefit from teacher guidance and support in venturing into these literacy endeavors. As teachers, we are the curriculum experts, and given the tools, we need to make them work in our classrooms to advance students’ reading, writing, and overall communication skills. We need to prepare students to be flexible writers, to understand how to write for different audiences and purposes, how to communicate effectively with multimodal tools, and what it means to share ideas online no matter how small or large the online outreach. Blogging is an ideal way to achieve many educational and literacy goals (pg 18)".

However, if we are going to have our students using blogs in our clasrrom, we need to teach them blog and computer safety.  These websites will be helpful to teach computer safety and resposibiliteies for blogging. Students need to know what our expectations for blogging.
http://tv.disney.go.com/disneychannel/commonsense/
http://educational-blogging.wikispaces.com/How+To+Teach+Commenting+Skills


I am new to this whole blogging "thing" and would want to take it slow with the students I work with.  One blog that was mentioned in the article was from a teacher that teaches in West Hartford, CT.  Her website  offered a nice way to introduce blogging while promoting lieteracy skills, such as, writing, reading, and communicating with our global community. Here is the website. http://ww2.sjc.edu/students/jecleary/KidBlog_Uses.htm  I can see myself using some of the ideas she mentioned on her website.

Wikis

While reading Richardson’s book, I came across a quote that really resonated with me.  “ In using wikis, students are not only learning how to publish content;  they are also learning how to develop and use all sorts of collaboration skills, negotiating with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance, and more (pg.61)”  Truly students are teaching and  learning from each other. Creating wikis in the classroom will help students in the 21^st century education, Common Core State Standards, and to prepare them for different careers.   As difficult as all this technology “jargon” is for me, I feel that I have no choice but to learn how to better incorporate technology and literacy into my teaching.  Do you see yourself using wikis in your classroom?  If so, how do you plan on introducing wikis to your students?

The book says that wikispaces is a good place to start your work with wikis!

New Literacies/NETS

New literacies is understanding the change that has taken place in communicating with reading and writing.  New literacies are redefining the way we need to teach students. As educators, we need to teach students the skills and strategies that they will need to continue to communicate with the world around them by teaching them how to locate, use, validate, and evaluate information they find on the Internet.    Because of the ever changing digital world, we need to integrate technology into all the content areas we teach.The National Educational Technology Standards for Students have been created to evaluate the skills and knowledge of students and to prepare students to communicate in this digital world.

Readings

I am reading a book for my grad class by Will Richardson titled Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts. I find this information so interesting. When I was in school computers and technology was not something that was part of any lesson taught by my teachers. Now, with the progression of the web, search engines,social media, etc students have extensive knowledge of technology, because it has always been a part of their world.

First post EVER!!!!!!!

I am really tired!!!