RSS Feed...I'm Hungry!

Reading through this chapter, I was excited, AGAIN, to read about the collaborative learning that can take place through blogs and other social networking sites. As Richardson states: “ …students at my old school have collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, elementary school kids in Georgia, high school students in Poland, theater troupes in Oklahoma, and the list goes on….In short, the blog has allowed students to build a community around their collaborations, and it has enhanced the depth of the curriculum” (24). When I think of the teacher that I spoke to at my daughter’s school a few months ago, she had never blogged with her students. When I mentioned a simple student blogging site (kidblog.org),

she was excited to report back to me the enjoyment that the students had at the opportunity to share their learning. I know many educators already incorporate blogging into their classrooms, but I think that many educators have not bought into this form of education yet. Oh how I wish they could see the simplicity of setting it up, and the wonderful benefits for student learning! "...we write not just to communicate but to connect with others who can potentially teach us more" (Richardson, 28). 

I am also excited about the opportunities that a blog can have for a school library. I have wavered back and forth between a website and a blog, and I am still undecided. I like the "keeping it current" aspect of a blog, but I also like the navigation of a website - as I have become familiar with using Weebly. When looking through the Lewis Elementary School site

mentioned in the Richardson text (25), this appealed to me. It looks like A LOT of work to set up, but I enjoyed the navigation aspects - similar to a website, and the fact that it was current - like a blog! Looking through some of the pages, I had to wonder how they set it up like they did, but I did notice it was done through wordpress. I haven't used wordpress yet, but may consider it once I am in a library. It looks like it has more features than blogger, but will also take some time to learn how to use the features...something I will have to look into later when I have more time!


Looking at blogging from an elementary school perspective, I appreciated Richardson's simple steps to introduce students to blogging. These suggestions are ones that I would certainly communicate to teachers who may be interested in starting some blogging with their students (32):

• find interesting sites and comment on what they find useful
• write about what they would like to see on the site
• recruit an audience to interact with students
• bring in sources like authors, politicians, etc...so students can ask questions and receive responses

RSS

Hmmm...After watching the hangout this past week, I decided to use feedly.com to replace my google reader. I tried to subscribe to a blog that I like to read using feedly, and it wouldn't work. So I went over to google reader to subscribe to it, and it added instantly. So I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but something is different, and I don't know what. Also strange is that when I created a category in feedly, this category showed up in my google reader list (???) So I don't know why I couldn't add the blog to feedly. Maybe it has to do with the site having an RSS feed, but this wouldn't make sense as to why it would appear in reader, and not in feedly. I'm stumped! I do like the look of feedly, so hopefully it will be as easy to use as google reader was!

So I went into feedly later, and lo-and-behold, there was the blog! I am guessing that feedly picked it up from my google reader. This is nice, but it won't be an option once google reader is gone! 

Reading the Richardson text and how to incorporate RSS feeds into my own blogs or websites sounds like a fantastic idea...it's just figuring out how to do it! I would like to try with some local news sites for practice. 

So I looked up the Kamloops Daily News website and found the RSS feed symbol:

When I clicked on it, another page popped up that looked like this:

So I decided to click on the RSS feed symbol beside "City & Region" and this popped up:

...and now I don't have a clue what to do with this! Time to head back into the Richardson text!

I think I must be missing something...I just can't quite figure this RSS feed thing out. It looks to be very useful...if I can get it to work! I know I enjoyed having the subscription to the blogs from our 477 group, as it made it very convenient to only have to look in one place to find everyone' information. I also like the suggestions by Richardson to create a Web Page (82), I just think I need some assistance in figuring this out....

....Aaron?