5650 - Reflections from the Introduction of Blogs and RSS Feeds...

As a former K-12 teacher, I completely agree that reflection and professional development are key components to a teacher's professional growth and their effectiveness with students. When I was in the classroon, blogs and RSS feeds were not part of our everyday routine as they are today. In my current role, one of my goals is to build our online teachers' capacity to use these tools in order to foster greater student learning and understanding.

The struggles associated with using blogs and RSS feeds with students for the first time are not surprising to me. I like how this article discusses some of the presumptions that were initially made, and the lessons learned from implementation the first time around (the authors modeling reflection!).

To summarize, here is a list of the lessons learned that resonate strongly with me:

1. Prepare for the semester by determining the purpose for using any new technologies (p. 57). Will blogs be used for reflection, professional development, and/or collaboration?

2. Provide more structure early on and then gradually decrease structure to allow for individuality (p. 58).

3. Minimize the number of websites students need to visit to gather information. Keeping these simple will keep the task manageable for students. (p. 58)

4. "It is important for instructors to model effective blogging for students so they can understand how the tools all tie together" (p. 59). Additionally, students might benefit from instructors' thoughtful reflection and responses to student blogs. A successful technique used was to post a couple of student blog entries on the instructor's blog for additional comment and highlighting.

5. As with anything, "adjustments will need to be made continually as the tools for communicating in the read/write internet continue to evolve almost every month - or even every day" (p. 60).