Blogs, RSS and Wikis are words that I was totally unfamiliar with a year ago. According to chapter 14, blogs are like an online diary or journal. It is your “Speaker’s Corner” to the world. The comments written are made in chronological order and can include embedded photos, videos and links. I can understand more about a blog now that I have one, but I have still not found one on the internet that I would like to read regularly. I can and will use a blog with my students this year to chronicle their writing.
RSS feeds are a little more difficult for me to understand since I don’t use them. Apparently they are a way of accessing several blogs involving news or updated material from other websites. It is like getting a newspaper or favorite magazine “hot off the press” I suppose. (Is it like a written version of a podcast that you receive as soon as it is published?) An aggregator organizes and collects many RSS feeds for you. It will probably be more useful when I find a blog that I would like to read on a regular basis.
Wikis are more familiar to me since my school used one last year in our search for a new reading series. It is an interactive website used for collaboration or group research. Many people can be invited to join and be connected to the others to view and comment or change what has been written. I can see the use of a Wiki in the classroom setting easily in order to make sure all students have a voice and/or participate in a discussion.
I’m learning a lot in this course. I’m hoping to be able to use these ideas in the classroom and more at home. Now, if I can only get my at home wireless internet to work properly, I wouldn’t be getting up an hour early to write this before class.
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