We had a few goals for the sessions:

• Concept Exposure: We wanted to introduce a number of concepts (and tools) to them, and we really wanted to stress that when leveraging technology in curriculum DO NOT focus on the tool… focus completely on the concept and skill you are introducing and let that drive your “tool choice.”
• Investigation: We needed to provide both time and the incentive for participants to learn the concepts and then encourage (sometimes force) them to explore and experiment with various tools that might fulfill the concepts…
• Direction and Commitment: We did NOT want this to be a typical  “sit and get” with little or no follow through to actually put what you learn into practice. i.e. really make at least one of these concepts truly integral to their personal professional learning or to their classroom.
• Repository: We wanted to have a repository for the participants not only to reference, but to provide practice and to help build out as a future resource… enter: Web20School

I can’t speak for the participants, but I can speak for Mike Bachrodt and myself and I am happy to say that the last four days have been a joy and we have one more left!  I can also say that all of the wonderful teachers we have attending the sessions have gone from amazingly overwhelmed to focused, passionate learners each with a different concept and tool set that they are excited to find all of the nuances of bring into their lives and classrooms.

Here is some of what they have discovered and created:

ToonDoo was a hit!  Here is the first comic of Karl Craddock (scroll left and right)

Samantha Serrano and Jim Nowak blogging

This really has been an amazing week!  I am looking forward to tomorrow and a bit sad at the prospect of the week ending.

RSS in Plain English from Common Craft

As you can see, RSS keeps you from having to hunt for information … especially from sites that you frequent often to gather information. This saves time and energy and focuses your attention on evaluating information and choosing whether to delve further into researching a specific topic or simply moving on to other more relevant information.

At this point it comes down to a choice of which RSS Aggregator is the right fit for you. As I mentioned in my previous post:

My choice of RSS Reader is NewsGator. One of my main criteria for an RSS aggregator was that it would function both online and via a mobile device. The majority of time I access NewsGator through my Motorola Q Global via NewsGator Go!. Additionally, NewsGator allows me to “Clip” a post or piece of information that I find valuable and save it permanently. This is huge as it keeps me from having to use an additional service like Furl for that purpose.

There are a number of other RSS Aggregators (Readers) out there. Some carry a $ cost with them others are free. Below is a brief list of a few of the more popular Readers (all free):

You also have other RSS Reader options. Most “portal” sites like Microsoft Live, iGoogle, MyYahoo, Pageflakes, and Netvibes (among others) have RSS Aggregators as a part of their functionality. I believe that Facebook and mySpace even have RSS widgets. Most likely the email client you already use has RSS capabilities… Additionally, the MAC OS and Microsoft Vista have desktop widgets that allow for RSS feeds to be displayed… get the idea that that RSS is all over out there, you just need to be open to a better way of pulling information to you as opposed to going to get it?

Now all you need to to is create an account with one of these services, and then start gathering “feeds” into your RSS Reader. Here are a couple of criteria that I like to use when trying to choose RSS Readers:

• How easy is it to use?
• Can I organize the feeds into folders or categories?
• How easy is it to add a feed? Does the service have a “wizard” of some sore that helps me find a feed on a page? (NewsGator does this well – all I need to do is put in the site URL and NewsGator hunts the site to try to automatically find and subscribe to the feed.
• Can it be used online and offline (this is key for me in case I have time but not a connection to the internet?
• Can it be accessed vie a mobile phone… either via the web or an application? This was the sell for NewsGator for me. With the link to NewsGator Go! I always have my RSS on my Motorola Q Global. When I read in either format, the service automatically updates both NewsGator and NewsGator Go! I can even add RSS feeds from my mobile.
• Is there a “toolbar” feature that makes it easy to subscribe and get to my feeds? (see picture below)
• Is it visually appealing? (vain, but if I am going to be looking at something repeatedly, I want it to be nice )

On to educational uses.

First and foremost, it should be something that you use for a while to get the feel for it and develop a good comfort level. Plus you may change readers a couple of times. Be careful, as Lee Lefever said, it does get addicting. Also, be comfortable with simply marking “All Posts Read” to get caught up and pay attention to recent updates… (I think I have 1600+ unread in the last couple of days… I will never get through that, but important issues will again bubble up to the surface for review.)

How about this for a classroom use: Think about how you have students research the internet right now… Typically, a teacher schedules 3 days in a computer lab all devoted to “research.” (Or two days of research and one for pulling it all together) Students do a lot of things with that time… some of it is even researching their topics, however, there is also a great deal of just gathering information without any true evaluation of the source or even the material they find. Additionally, often students take the path of least resistance and only click through the first five Google links. Then they cut and paste this information into a PowerPoint or some other tool. Finally they read from the screen along with the rest of the class when presenting… Sound familiar?

How different could it be if this was how the research went like this? Two weeks before you are set to begin an inquiry based project you schedule one (1) (<- see that ONE) day in the lab for research. The students would have had an RSS Aggregator set up in the beginning of the year or you take the first five minutes of class for them to register with your favorite. Now you have the students begin researching current relevant topics through news agencies and blogs… using delicious and technorati as search vehicles… doing google searches and ONLY grabbing the RSS feed for the topic. Now all of the information that is returned is NOT REVIEWED AT THIS POINT but, put into the RSS Aggregator to be allowed to continue to collect for the next two weeks. Perhaps you have them work a bit to create folders to categorize some of the information on the fly like:

• Background information / Google search RSS
• Relevant News Stories
• Blogs and other first person accounts
• Misc.

Then when the hour is over, you all go back to your regularly scheduled classes for the next two weeks. However, during this time the RSS Reader is chugging away gathering more and more information related to the topic of the students choice. When it comes time for the inquiry based project to begin, you bring the students back to the lab, and they now begin to use and develop their skills at “grazing” information, evaluating the relevance of the information in their reader, the credentials of the source of the information, digesting the information and what type of impact it would have on their project. They would also begin the process of evaluating presentation vehicles… how will they present this information so all of their peers, parents, and teachers best understand and be impacted by the message they are working to get across…

How much different of a learning experience would that be for your students?

Other Thoughts:

On an aside while you can do group work with RSS through Google Reader, with each having their own account account, there is the potential that a group RSS Reader would need to be set up, or to expand this you actually use a Ning or a tool like Diigo to build in a social aspect and greater collaboration. Or even a tool like a shared Zoho Notebook for data gathering and presentation.

Hope you are thinking about other ways to embrace RSS for your personal learning environment as well as the advancement of student learning and achievement.

Scott

Teaching is often looked at as a reflective process, and as such we often view it in almost the light of scientific methodology. We begin with a skill or concept that is going to be taught (Define the question). We develop a lesson or unit with curricula to engage and convey the concept (Hypothesis and data gathering). We teach the lesson/unit (Perform) We develop a formative assessment to gauge learning and assess student comprehension and achievement. Then we “reflect” (oh, how I hate that word) on the entire process to internalize the lesson/unit and it outcomes and begin planning adjustments. While this is not a bad model for lessons and units, when it is used with making technology integral to teaching, in my experience it simply breaks the process.

Students do not have this internalization process. They simply utilize whatever is at hand… be it a technology or anything else. In the retail world we would call them the ultimate consumer. Today’s students ultimately use a “SEE IT, USE IT, TEACH IT” methodology. Ryan Bretag tweeted yesterday about how he helped his mom learn how to use skype… then he corrected himself and said he sat back and watch his niece and nephew use and model skype while he sat back and watched. Another example, I was attending a conference last year where Wes Fryer was presenting and he told a story of how a group of students had developed an online presentation and an hour before they were due to present the District blocked that resource… Now for a teacher that would possible be a crushing blow and cause a major hiccup in their lesson for the day and tarnish that type of tool for future use, the students simply found a different online presentation tools, and in 20 minutes moved their entire presentation over to the new resource and they were ready for class…

As an educator how would you have reacted to that situation? There is not time to internalize a new tool…

This is the difference! We need to move away from the need to internalize or we begin to lose engagement.

Too often I have seen teachers look at a tool, and simply refuse to do anything with it “because no one has shown me how to use it” (<- that is a future post I will be making.) or they are given training or investigate a technology and determine that at this time there is too much on their plate to focus their attention on it at this time… then they simply file it away regardless of the impact it could have on students… (or worse they don’t know anything about it and they assign a projects with the use of the tool as a requirement for the output but cannot support students when they have questions – here the rational I have heard is “that they are young they can figure it out”) but I digress… now the knowledge for this tool is rattling around in his or her brain for a use… then comes the time where they are hard pressed for “something” because the demands of their class / curriculum require something… (internalization) and OH YEAH! I remember something about “X” that can help here… Hello new tool! However, also quite often they do not remember how to use the technology or have not truly made it integral to their teaching, but use it as an alternative methodology… with the world we live in today this simply does not work. We need to begin to investigate, adapt, accept, and embrace at a gut level.

I realize that with technology, teachers often fear “breaking” something, or feel they do not have TIME to be open to learning something new as it “adds” to their workload. (as opposed to replacing or enhancing their current instruction) OK, I know that this post will feel like I am coming down on teachers, and in a way I am. I also know that there are a LOT of great teachers out there embracing technology and driving their students to the edge of capacity, but there are also a great number of educators who simply do not want to even think about 21st Century skills because they have their curriculum established and opening that door makes revision necessary. There are a lot of folks out there that discuss the issues with teaching or education reform… unfortunately too often those in the spotlight are NOT educators themselves, but we [educators] have to live with the decisions uneducated lawmakers impose on education. However, often the people who really get in the way of educational reform are teachers ourselves.

Ok, I said it, kill me now and let the flamewar begin.

We are so caught up in content or standards that we are not looking at what is crucial to the world today and how our students will need to interact on a global level when they stop being OUR students and need to have skills to survive beyond the educational process. David Warlick has had a number of great posts along these lines one on Pedagogy Getting in the way of Learning and a more recent one on What Would you have Them Say. Additionally, Marc Prensky is speaking around the country with his Engage Me or Enrage Me topic set. While some (including myself) challenge some of the extravagant statistics he throws around, and well sorry Marc horrible ugly slides, his message is sound. The students we are teaching today are growing up in a global connected authentic world. I presented on this topic myself last November.

Ok, so the questions that keep bouncing around in my head are:

• Where do we go from here?
• How do we create (or re-find) that childhood love of investigation for all educators?
• How do we break down the fear barrier?
• How do we become comfortable moving away from [canned] curriculum?
• How do we meet the needs of 21st Century learners?
• What is it really going to take to make technology integral to learning?

I would like your thought and comments… even negative ones. We all learn best from our mistakes.

Scott

Photo from Flickr: Comte de Cagliostro