Week 2

My experience using a blog is a work in progress; I am moving slowly but surely at figuring out how to use it. I'm still having trouble navigating the frontier! I am looking forward to Saturday when I will have the time to really try some different things at my leisure. I just set up my RSS readers today, I need to come up with some topics of interest to subscribe to. Right now I am only subscribed to some educational topics and different news links. I was surprised that there are so many different sites to confuse me, I mean choose from! Having had no formal or informal computer training, much of what we are doing frustrates me, but once I get it (and I usually do) I enjoy the projects.
Initially I would have said that the blog and RSS are at the top of Dale's cone, more abstract than concrete. the pictures, videos, clips and articles that are available on line are all considered abstract. However, in this class, for me, this is definitely a direct purposeful experience. Having to actually find my way around cyberspace with nothing but a keyboard has been a very real and concrete experience.
I am still learning what each of these tools (blog, RSS and wiki) is capable of, but the blog could contain graphics, can be easily updated, as well as interactive with your followers, who create a community. In a classroom I could see my students and me creating a blog to keep parents and friends up to date on the events of our classroom. At five and six years of age, this would have to be a group effort. I'm sure that they would delight in the colors and photos that we could post to share with everyone at home.
The RSS would keep us updated on the latest information on ever changing subjects ( war, weather, state test scores or any current event, to name a few). RSS would keep us updated on a very specific subject; earlier this week our class watch the take off of the space shuttle, I would guess that their is a link to follow this mission. It would be a wonderful event to follow.
I think that wikis are a great invention (?) for group projects in the higher grades. For my little ones, again I would have to help. My first graders are writing a research paper about an animal that interests them. I have given them questions written on lined paper with space to answer the questions i.e. What does the animal eat? Where does it live? What does it look like? By creating a wiki for each of the students they could answer the question and then edit the question out. It would be a great way for them to organize their facts for the paper. Paper and pencil work fine but papers get misplaced or messy when erased and rewritten on; using the computer would eliminate these problems as well as hone their computer skills.