What in the world is RSS????

RSS is actually very new to me — just started using it about one month ago, but I tell, you I love it. Here’s what it stands for - “really simple syndication”. Okay, that doesn’t tell you too much, so let me try this word picture. Think of yourself in a really big room (symbolic of the Internet). On the other side of this big room are several booths sets up — they are your favorite sites on the Internet. To go get any new information just added to your favorite site, you’d have to “walk over” to the booth (think type in the site’s URL into your browser), then, once there, personally scour the table to see what’s new (look around the site to see if anything has been added). Time consuming? Yes, especially if you have several sites you want to keep up on. Enter RSS. Want the new stuff automatically delivered to you? Yes you can — with RSS. Okay, so now visualize an automated clothesline pulley that extends from your end of the room and connects to one of your booths (a fave site). Every time the “booth” has new info, they take a copy of it, use a clothesline pin and attach it to your always moving, automated pulley line. It, of course, travels back to you so you can read it at your leisure. Can you have only one pulley? No, you can have as many pulleys as you want, each hooked up to your favorite “booths”, aka your fave web sites.
This is RSS — it is a technology that allows you to subscribe to new Internet material. It comes to you, fast, reliably and free. But you must be saying, how does that stuff come to me? Email? Well, it can, but I’d suggest you try out an “aggregator”, a piece of software, either desktop or web-based, that will gather all your news coming “off the pulley”. This aggregator will allow you to login and see what’s new whenever you want.
While there are tons of aggregators out there, here is the one I really, really, really love. It’s called Netvibes. Simply put, it does so much more than just gather your RSS feeds — it is capable of becoming your homepage - a place that brings together, in one place, the things you use most during the day (email, to do lists, etc.). I learned about Netvibes at the Awakened Voices Learning Center, a truly awesome site dedicated to creating free online tutorials to help others more effectively use the social web. Their online video on how to set up a Netvibes account is great! Highly recommend it! I find that my Netvibes page has become my favorite web page; it acts as a aggregator for all my RSS feeds, but also my email, acts as my online calendar, displays the Denver weather, and much more! With Netvibes, I’m able to keep abreast of professional issues, news, email correspondence and more. Did I mention it is customizable (lots of drag and drop features)? Now this is what a home page should be! Oh, and can you have the newest info from”That Which is Movado” sent to you via RSS? You bet! Look on the lower right side and you’ll see just such a link for you to use.

Today’s reading time finds…

On Monday, Tuesday and Friday reading times (start of hour 2), if you peek into my lab, you’ll often find me intensely staring at my computer monitor. I usually spend this time reading new RSS feeds on technology in education to try and keep up on all that is moving and shaking out there beyond the walls of AHS. Today I spent some time reading all the new articles added to the techlearning.com site. Four brief, yet excellent, articles bear mention particularly because they relate specifically to this blog and also because a few of them reference Will Richardson, someone I mentioned in yesterday’s post.
Web 2.0: A Guide for Educators
Professional Development and Web 2.0
Web 2.0 and the New Visual Literacy Web 2.0 Pocket Dictionary

The potential of blogging inside and outside of the classroom…

Why Weblogs?, from Will Richardson’s blog Weblogg-ed.com, is really worth your time if this whole blogosphere thing is new to you. It is actually a post and set of comments on why educators should embrace this learning tool in the classroom and in curriculums. And it’s for all kinds of subject matters; only last week I was reading about a high school math teacher who was having her students blog about Calculus. Will also has put out a book for educators called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Have been wanting to get ahold of this book and see what great ideas can be gleaned from it. I think it will make for some good summer reading. :)
Also related to this idea of authentic student writing/learning, and recently talked about on his site, is the potential for students to publish their writing via Lulu.com. I had come across this back before Christmas and had mentioned it to my mom who is working on a book. I think this site has much to offer our students, as well.

A New Endeavor…

Some of you might be saying, “there was a Web 1.0?” I said it, too, so admit it. Web 1.0 focused on using the web in a receptive way — viewers pretty much just read articles, web pages, and the like. But today, with the incredible explosion of web-based applications, the web has become read/write. It begs for participation from the viewer — to comment on ideas, to interact with what is on screen, to share with others. This is the Web 2.0. This is the Web 2.0 transforming education.My interest is how we as educators can harness these new emerging technologies. I’m talking blogging, podcasting, wikis, RSS feeds, social networks, open source software, online web applications and more. Additionally, I am interested in finding some in building professionals who want to learn with me via this blog. I know, I know. To many blog is a “four letter word” – I have to admit that, before I knew much about it, I had my preconceived ideas. I now know that they have immense educational potential. They’re not just diaries or journal entries. Blogs are an online way to communicate ideas and collaborate on these ideas with others who have your same interests and to be challenged by those who see it differently. We get so little opportunity to really do this even though we park our cars in the same lots each morning. So, it is my hopes of stepping forward, to be progressive in my teaching using new web technologies and inviting other interested colleagues to join me. But we can’t teach students to blog, to use wikis, to use RSS feeds, unless we do it ourselves.

Jaw-dropping silence likely to occur for educators…

I can’t claim this is something new, but to many of us, it will be. I think it started making it around the Internet sometime earlier this academic year, but what is awesome is that it was created by a teacher right here in the Denver Metro area, Karl Fisch from Arapahoe High School (then modified later by Dr. Scott McLeod, who graciously gave me a non-streaming copy of it). Karl put it together for a start-of-the-year staff inservice, but who could have known it would gain the attention it has. You’ll find it on YouTube, and many other places with very high viewership ratings. By the way, check out Karl’s blog; he was a major inspiration in me starting this blog. Click on the hyperlinked text below to discover what the buzz is all about. It takes about 30 seconds to load, so expect a brief, but worth-it wait.

Movie Hyperlink

Now that wasn't too bad...

Did it! Really wasn’t that hard. Made my first wiki two nights ago so the technology committee here at school could collaborate on some documents. Ended up using a free wiki called PBwiki. PB stands for Peanut Butter. They claim that making a wiki with them is about as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich, and it’s pretty close. What our committee really needed was more of a repository to hold documents that have already been published or are still in the works. This way, when we meet in the Smart lab, we can all go to our online wiki and add, revise, delete documents in real time as we talk about them. It’s a cool collabortive tool! But, I’m not deluded. It’s early yet, and everyone has to get used to it. Would really like to use this in a class - would love to set up group topics and then let the kids develop the wiki based on what they have learned on certain topics. It keeps track of who adds what and when, which is a nice touch for those students who might be tempted to ride on someone else’s shoulders. (Oh, and PS - If you are new to this blog, scroll down and read the following entries to get caught up to speed).

I Woke Up and Smelled the Burning Coffee

It is true. Our experience with coffee can be indicative of our professional teaching lives.Getting out of bed can be a bit anticlimactic for me these days. There is usually the wonderful smell of brewed coffee floating throughout the house, beckoning me to caffeinate my brain, get dressed and don a can-do attitude to face the day. I’m a bit of a purist, though, when it comes to coffee. Give me Starbucks, but on my terms. I scour the ads for the most reasonable by-the-pound price and definitely groove the brew-it-whenever-you-want freedom that this affords. But, over the last year or so, all that is good and right in my coffee world has changed. As I age, I seem to cling to every second of remaining rest in the morning while my husband seems to be doing the exact opposite. He is getting up at 4:00 on some mornings, sometimes earlier. I used to love our unspoken rule of the last twenty years - the first up is the first to fix the coffee. But no more. Coffee that has been brewed and sitting in a pot for 2+ hours is what I call “burnt” coffee. At first it will smell like okay coffee, but as you take your initial sips, you instantly realize it is not. It’s been reducing, thickening, concentrating into pourable nastiness. As of late, I have dumped many a cup right down the drain and made a new, fresh batch just to rectify the emotionally disturbing moment. I’m getting better, though. I am starting to smell when coffee has “turned” abnormal. There is an smell, I’ve decided, of even the most slightly “burnt” coffee.I’ve had an interesting parallel in my professional life as a computer science teacher. I’ve had a website for about nine years now, which is a long time in our digital world. Years ago I was fascinated and drawn to the process behind making web pages. Learning html, Javascript, CSS and how to make web graphics made the left and right sides of my brain hum in happiness! I immediately wanted to share what I was learning with my students and so established a web design class where I could also use my web page to support their learning. Enrollment those first few years was pretty good. But something happened these last few years. The Web 1.0 became Web 2.0, and the strangest thing is I sensed it was happening, slowly like burnt coffee, but really didn’t lift my head from my own learning to see it happen. A few years back, I had convinced myself that I needed to immerse myself in web design concepts/software , i.e. navigation/usability issues, optimization, how to better make use of Photoshop, GoLive, Flash, Html, CSS and the likes. And that’s where I’ve been, immersed and not looking around much at what’s been going on. I thought, if I just learn enough about this stuff, kids and staff will be into it before no time. Never mind that it is puzzle-like sometimes, challenging, time-consuming, and yet rewarding. While I was slaving away to build a viable curriculum in this area (which I quickly found out changes every time you breathe in), the world solved the problem. People want to read and write to the web to express themselves or an idea, but they don’t want the steep learning curve I have offered these last few years. MySpace figured that one out quickly, as did all blogging platforms. Make it easy and they will come. So here I am, refocusing, redirecting it is where I want to go and where I should be taking my students as a high school computer science teacher. Reading The World is Flat by Friedman has jolted me into a new reality that I must responsibly get students ready for the 21st century in the best way possible. Saying that is the easy part. Doing it — another thing. Teaching how to make a “car” is important - if this is the engineering field you want to go into. But most of use won’t. We’ll be users/drivers instead, and knowing ”how to drive” will be the most important skill. Then you can go places. I guess the same could be said of computer skills. I’m ready to let students learn to use user-friendly Internet tools (pre-made web-based applications) to start “driving” - blogging, podcasting, vlogging, and more. That’s what it’s about, I’m thinking. So, thus this blog. My learning about teaching, technology and computer skills is so much like this, always evolving, changing and growing. I have determined that if I remain motionless in my own professional growth, or overly concentrated in one aspect of it, I’ve become much like a slowing burning pot of coffee, undrinkable and not what I should offer others when I know there is fresh, good stuff out there to be had.