This experience has revealed just how much of a technological desert I really am! Blogging is very new to me, but I am feeling a great sense of achievement when I do finally accomplish an activity which has to be a good thing right? Whilst the YouTube video on 'setting up an RSS aggregator' was fairly straight forward, it took me some time to get my head around how to 'actually apply it', but I think I have got it now. I managed to set up my Google Reader account without too much trouble, so this is a good start.
I can see that in a real life scenario, students can benefit from having a Blog and utilising this RSS feed, because as they add the URLs of their fellow colleagues' blogs to their 'feeds, and each time they make a new posting, they can read and comment on what they have shared. What a wonderful way of encouraging interactive student-centric based learning. This also supports the engagement theory as it promotes interation in the context of group activities (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999, pp.2-3).
As mentioned by Marzano & Pickering (2006, pp.29-30), as part of Dimension 1 of the DoL (Attitudes Perceptions), students should perceive tasks as valuble and interesting as this will help them develop positive attitudes and perceptions about classroom tasks. So I can see there are many ways in which technology could be encouraged with our students and one of these is by interacting via Blogs. One example for primary school students could be to post a series of images and links to great reading activities that kids can do from home.
References:
Kearsley, K., & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning.
Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (with Arrendondo, D. E., Paynter, D. E., Blackburn, G. J., Brandt, R. S., Pollock, J.E., Moffett, C.A & Whisler, J. S.). (2006). Dimensions of learning teacher’s manual (2nd ed.). Alexandra, VA: ASCD.
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