Expanding the Boundaries:
This chapter was very good & interesting. With education starting to go more & more to technology, there also comes a lot of negatives and "fire walls". Alan November does a great job of giving examples & sites to help teachers be able to use blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis. The best part is the examples from real teachers and how they use them.
The biggest thing to take away from this chapter is that blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis can be dangerous, but we teachers should provide excellent role models & thoughtful ethics for students to be able to use them in the classroom. We don't have control of what they do out of school, but need to set the examples for them to use and carry over.
Blogs: There was a teacher who was having his class blog about the book they were reading, Mississippi Trail, and the actual author got involved on the blog and ended up coming to their school. Several examples talk about the possibilities of global connections on assignments that students across the world could connect on. More students are excited about writing. They enjoy doing it, look forward to doing it, & continue with this on their own.
RSS: is the new way of "bookmarking" websites, but much better. Teacher's can subscribe to receive feeds from their favorite sources and they receive information the minute it hits the web. This in not very popular, but is gaining.
Podcasts: is audio or video. Lets students experience knowledge of lifelong leraners. There are lots of podcasts you can download through iTunes. The students become the leaders & learners.
Wikis: is a web based tool that allows groups to work on a piece at one time & add to it. Wikipedia has had bad press because anyone & everyone can add to it. There are community members who do monitor to check how valid every entry that is made. The example for this is a project that students all over the world can come together & tell stories of where they live.
Alan November says that these are some of the technologies that students are using & will be asked or required to use in the future. That teacher's need to step up and be the "positive" role models for our students.
