Real Simple Syndication is a Really Super System

Once again I have found the directions to be intimidating, but the actual process was a breeze. I subscribed to CNN, KCCI, DSM register, NMSA articles and student projects as well as French Blog Polly-Vous Français? I haven't tried the more advanced searches for feeds. I am waiting to see what happens after awhile of getting feeds from these. It wasn't the best day to set up feeds since Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett both died yesterday. All my news feeds were feeding the same information. I looked on technorati for awhile, but I didn't find anything I wanted to subscribe to on it. I picked a random one to practice the subscribe and unsubscribe and that was so easy. I did find a blog by a group of French speakers in Manhattan that blog to keep up their French skills. This is something our department has talked about wanting. It is hard to keep my French and Spanish abilities up when I only speak beginning French and Spanish in my classes. I thought this was an interesting way to use the technology for professional development.

I had been toying with the idea of having my kids complete writing assignments on a blog. I thought I might try it with one class, or as an optional way to complete the assignment for a couple of reasons. I see 160 kids a day and the idea of monitoring that many blogs scares me to death. I put in all the different sites I have been using and with RSS, I finally found a way to manage some of this technology. In the text the author states, "Instead of checking out all twenty-five (or thirty, or more) student Weblogs everyday, you could just collect their work in your aggregator using their RSS feeds."(pg. 77, Richardson, 2009) Richardson went on to say that using feeds "drastically reduced my reading time and allowed me to make all of my classes paperless."(Richardson, 2009) This is encouraging, but I really want to know it's possible with the number of students I am dealing with each day. Right now I am leaning towards group work so that would end up with maybe 36 total to check? That leads to my next questions. Will my district allow that? If they do allow it, how do I make sure the same student isn't doing the group's work every time?

While searching RSS videos, I found one on customizing youtube videos to your reader, CustumizingRSSYouTube. I also found a couple of others I thought I would share with you. Why let our students blog? video link out of New Zealand that supports blogging was really cool. I also found a clip about girls being way out numbered in technology related fields, which says to me we really need to be making sure girls are successful and knowledgeable. I think most of the careers in our students will revolve around technology.Aint Gonna Hold Us Back D-I-G-I-T-A-L

I better go check for any updates on my new reader. Enjoy the clips!

The wild world of wikis

I am really liking the possibilities of a wiki, but at the same time I am dreading the management side. How do I check them often enough to make sure nothing inappropriate is posted? Are they secure and safe for my students? How are contributions identified and graded? I am feeling very confident that I can create a wiki, but I am very stressed about the actual implementation. I keep reminding myself of the quote regarding Wikipedia in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Tools for Classrooms. It said, " If anyone can edit anything on the site any time they want, how in the world can you trust what you read there?"they ask. It's a great question. The answer is that, thankfully, there are vastly more editors that want to make it right than those who want to make it wrong." (p.56, Richardson, 2009) My next question for them is, but were they working with middle-schoolers?

Any one who has spent any amount of time with children in the 11-13 year old range knows what I am talking about. It is the age of impulsive behaviors and irrational thoughts. Many times I will ask a student why they did something they obviously knew was wrong and the response is inevitably, "I don't know." I really don't think they know sometimes. I will hold on to my belief that all people, including the often hormonally challenged students in my class, are inherently good people who will do the right thing and give this wiki thing a whirl. However, if any of you have any pointers on the management side to make the ride a little less bumpy, bring them on!

My first wiki
Log them On music video

How did I get here?

Wow! I did it, my very own blog. If you would have asked me who bloggers were I would not have expected myself to be included. I am a middle school modern language exploratory teacher who lives in a very small town kind of in the middle of Iowa. I am not a guru or expert on anything and definitely not a technology wiz. So how did I end up here? Let’s blame it on Vegas and my Australian pen pal.

Did I get your attention there? You see when I was in my middle school French class things were still running old school. We paid a dollar and got a pen pal from the country we selected. I started with five pen pals from all over the world and Andrew from Australia is the one that stuck. We have written each other for twenty-five years and I consider our relationship’s evolution to coincide with the evolution of Web 2.0. We started with snail mail, which we still occasionally use, and phone calls. That was all we had from junior high to high school, but when I was in college email came along. I can remember telling Andrew we could email anyone on our campus, and he responded with how cool it would be if we could someday email between our countries. It wasn’t long and we were doing just that. Last year he coerced me into creating a Facebook account because we could keep up better. Andrew and his daughter were my very first friends and truly I didn’t expect many more. Within days I had requests coming in like mad from high school and college friends, other teachers, and my daughter’s friends. I found out my 20th class reunion was being done almost entirely on Facebook.

So how did Vegas play in? Andrew had to come to the states in March for work and since we had never met, we decided it was time and we picked Vegas. I took a couple of personal days and my husband and I met Andrew along with three other of his American pen pals for a long weekend. Right before I left, our principal had offered an opportunity for teams of teachers to write up a tech proposal and the administration would select teams to pilot new technology and then train others. The perk was we could ask for whatever we needed for the project. Several of us talked about it over lunch and thought it sounded like a good deal and decided on net books and flip video cameras. Because I was leaving for Vegas, my great colleagues wrote the proposal and sent it to me to look over. After a few times back and forth we submitted it and found out we were selected. That’s when it hit me. Now I have to learn how to do this stuff and quickly, so of course I went in search of a class. So that’s how I ended up with my very own blog. Blogging is one of the assignments in the technology course I am taking, Web 2.0 for the 21st Century Classroom.

I was hit with another curve ball when I ended up with a surgery scheduled for the first day of the on-line course. I once again went the old school route and contacted the teacher via email and she allowed me to work ahead before the surgery. So now I am asked to reflect on how things are going with the class. I am seeing the advantages of technology first hand. I would have missed a week off a traditional class since I can’t drive. I can also only sit up for short periods of time, so I work 10-15 minutes and then lay down for awhile. When I start again everything is still in the same place it was before. I can re-watch the video clips if the pain killers had me in too much off a fog the first time. Before the web, I probably would have dropped the course. With the technology, I am still right on track.

So here I go, jumping in to the unknown with my copy of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. I also read his article, Becoming Network-Wise(Educational Leadership, March 2009) and I am sold that technology is the way to go. In the article, Richardson states "we can use our own networks to connect to other classrooms to co-create and collaborate on projects and content, and we can give those works real, global audiences by publishing them on-line."(pg.31, Educational Leadership, March 2009) I teach French and Spanish to middle school students. One of the biggest battles I fight is getting the students to see the people in other countries as real people. What better way then having them work together? The students also want to know when they will use languages in "real" life, so perhaps a blog or on-line survery of some sort with area leaders and businesses.

Finally, the Joy of Blogging by Davis and McGrail(Educational Leadership, March 2009) states, "Brain research indicates that growth is enhanced when students move beyond their comfort zones, and into the unknown."(Brooks & Brooks 1994;Jensen1993) I am not sure where it will all go, but I will get over my fear of the unknown and dive right in. I can always use a little more brain growth. If you need anymore encouragement, check out this video, Technology Fear Factor in Education. I had to watch it twice before I could read the text message spellings so I consider it tech training as well.