Week 2 Reflection

Initially, I was shocked at how easy it was to set up a blog. I’ve read blogs before but couldn’t believe that it took literally minutes to set one up for myself. I use a number of Google efficiency tools, but I had not had experience with Google Reader. I logged into that component of Google to find I had somehow already subscribed to several blogs that I regularly follow. What a great surprise that this tool is available to put all of the news feeds and interesting blogs that I enjoy reading in one place.

Honestly, at my level, I feel that both blogs and RSS feeds lend themselves best to the demonstrations band of Dale’s Cone of Experience. As a teacher of such young children, I must show students how these tools can be used in the classroom, provide step-by-step instructions in using these tools, and always clarify any misconceptions or generalizations that the students present. Dale points out that in order for a demonstration to be effective, students need to be “creatively” and “imaginatively” engaged. By accessing blogs with content personalized for the students, with content directly related to our classroom activities, I can provide the foundation for students to be engaged in the way that Dale suggests.

Thinking about Postman’s perspective, I’ve considered what type of problem I have in my classroom and how a blog could be a solution. One problem that I have at the second grade level is matching students with age-appropriate websites and their struggles with typing in those websites correctly. I would love to set up a blog for small groups of students, or individual students, as needed. Students could name their blog, which would give them the ability to spell the web address correctly, and I could customize the blogs to meet the needs of each group of learners. The blogs would be filled with web quests based on our current curriculum, age-appropriate Scenarios, and would be differentiated to meet students’ interest and ability needs. In regards to the RSS feeds, I see another problem that the feeds could be a solution for. Every year in March, my second graders and I follow Alaska’s Iditarod dog sled race. Subscribing to a feed would be a way to be constantly updated, quickly and efficiently, to check in on the racers progress. There are a number of blogs that update racers statuses and provide interesting information. We could use Google Reader as a clearinghouse for this data. Students could access this feed with minimal adult assistance and the fact that all of the information would be in one place would allow us to save a substantial amount of time typing in websites and navigating unfamiliar sites (this is very labor-intensive for eight-year-olds). Thus, it would give us more time to dive into the information that we use in our math and social studies lessons. Both of these problems may seem very simple and unsubstantial to some, but at my level these are real concerns that a blog and RSS could help alleviate for my students and I.