We All Need An Aggregator

A what, did you say? Yes, an aggregator so we can take advantage of RSS feeds. So many new terms. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. This technology enables someone to subscribe to the content created on a particular blog so they no longer have to visit the blog itselft to get it. Now, that's something I could sure use about now. Up until now I only visited a few family member blogs, and that was when I thought about them. Now, as a class, we all have blogs. Visitng everyone's blog was getting time consuming; technology has a way of doing that, don't you think? And, just when I was getting whinie about all the effort it was taking, along came the assignment on RSS.

The catch is you need an aggregator to collect the RSS feeds. Very simply, it's a site that retrieves the individual posts of information. I chose to use Google Reader because it's already a part of Blogger. All I had to do was click on the bottom of the screen in blogger and it sent me right to the reader. All I needed to do was follow the directions and simply subscribe to the various blogs I was interested in. I was able to organize my blogs in folders. One for class and one for family. I just check peirodically and voila all the new posts come up in one place. Note to family following this blog: You gotta try this.

As a student, I am seeing immediate advantages as I am taking another course dealing with the political system. Tracking the Sotomayor nomination process just got a lot easier. The down side is that there is so much information out there that it's hard know which blogs are valuable to subscribe to. I had a little bit of trouble unsubscribing to a site I thought I wanted until I finally recognized that the symbol I was looking at was a trash can.

As an instructor, how great is this for keeping track of your students' blogs? Only having to go to one site is sure to be a time saver. The text mentions that parents could also keep track of their child's classroom blog. The kids probably wouldn't appreciate this aspect of the aggregator.

There is still so much to explore. I'm sure I will discover more uses for the aggregator as time goes on.

Maybe A School Website?

As my classmates know, I am an elementary school office manager. The district is very small, approx. 3,000 K-8, with limited technology and finances. In our readings, I was very excited to discover information regarding school websites built from Weblogs. As my first experience with a blog has been relatively easy, I mentioned this idea to a few parent volunteers. They so liked the idea that they decided I should be able to design one and get it up and running for the beginning of school in September! No matter that I'm taking classes and have other obligations during the summer. A school website is now certainly on my radar, but maybe not until October or so. If anyone can direct me to more information on school web sites, it would be greatly appreciated.

From the readings, I can also see that the biggest hurdle will be to map out the various stakeholders' expectations. For example: Parents might want homework on the blog. Most of my teachers will not want the obligation of updating that. And, from my front office experience, parents will use the excuse that the homework wasn't updated so it's not the child's fault if it wasn't done. Where's the student's responsibility in all this? I'm sure there are many other philosophies that will need to be worked out ahead of time.

In the meantime, I will continue to discover the advantages of different technology as the course moves on, and I will be ever observant as to how they could be used in our future school website.

Building an Elephant?

Lately the election news in Iran has been getting a lot of attention. With the news agencies shut down everyone is depending on blogs, twitter, or whatever for information. This reminds me of the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each blind man could only describe one piece of the elephant and relate it to something else. My question is: Is it possible to build a complete elephant from the little bits and pieces, and at the end is it recognizable as an elephant?

Joining the Information Highway

Setting up this blog was fairly simple. The biggest challenge was following the directions. Just don't attempt it when you're tired. I kept saving my blog and nothing was happening. I just never paid attention to the "publish post" button. Having accomplished this, it was off to bed for me. I'm learning I do my best work in the early mornings.

As my newspaper keeps getting smaller and smaller and keeps sending me to the web, I worry about the validity of what I am reading. I can see how blogs are beneficial in confirming or debunking the news. I can also see how the blogs could manipulate the news. Interesting world.

My daughter moved to Alaska gettingbyinalaska.blogspot.com and many of my co-workers, as well as myself, have been interested in life there. We've certainly enjoyed her blog. I have also read blogs that probably contain too much personal information. I guess it's up to the reader if they want to continue reading those blogs or not.

I can certainly see the educational value of blogging. Wouldn't it be fun to have a classroom of students each have a blog and blog on the same experience? As everyone would have a different experience we would probably get a better picture of that experience.

You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

Well, I never thought I'd have a blog, and here I am. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Even my 89 year old mother is learning about email. The thing is that while I'm racing to keep up with the kids and grandkids, I sometimes don't see the value in a lot of what they are doing. So, because I am attending the National Labor College and this is a technology class, I can at least look for the potential educational value of having a blog.