Week Two Reflections

Week Two Reflections

My impressions of using a Blog are great. I have never used one before and I can see the uses of this tool to keep in touch with students and parents. It is less fixed than a web page and allows for quicker changes. I would like also to have my students to develop their own Blogs as we have, so they can post responses to each other and me. I liked how after a little exploring of Blogger you can personalize your blog. Even if it may be argued that a Blog is not an answer to a question of a better newsletter. I still think the instantaneousness of the blog and its ability to get information out to more people quickly justifies its role as a tool. The RSS feed was much harder for me to figure out how to establish. However, once I had completed entering everyone’s blog address I was up and running instantaneously. I love how I got feed back and was able to read what everyone else was thinking in the class. I would like to know how to limit outside responses to my Blog that people can view through the RSS feed. Would prefer to have a group RSS feed that is specifically for this class. If I were setting this up for my class then I would want to filter out who is in contact to my students. I can see and I am sure I will find more and more uses for these two tools.

This weeks reading were markedly different from last weeks. They were more interesting despite one of them Dale’s Cone being one of then oldest reading so far. Dale was very progressive in his thinking for 1969 when it comes to technology. He made references to ways that technology could be used to enhance learning in both the abstract and concrete by products that were not common place then or even invented. Our blogs can be linked to video and create a simulated or virtual classroom or place to visit. Virtual field trips and demonstrations that include recordings and still pictures are prefect for blogs. Dale says “talking about experiences …is an excellent means of helping students learn to read intelligently about them. A blog is just that a way to convey my experiences.  Imaginative involvement by students on a teachers blog or even building their own is high in the abstract learning part of the cone but also hands on that can be in the concrete part of the cone. The cone has a fluidity that lends itself to moving students up and down the cone. In its simplest form pushing a button to make exhibits work is not needed but as Dale says it does engage. The RSS feeds in recent years have shown that news and comments from around the world can be instantaneous and when coupled with images such as the riots in Egypt are powerful tools for immediacy in learning. In his time Dale refers to television and satellite pictures “as close as any mechanical device can get to the direct experience.” As direct experiences go up by using tools like RSS feeds, abstraction can be mastered but balanced by more concrete hand on tools such as blogs. As Dale said “The medium influences the message and the message influences the medium. Both Blogs and RSS Feeds are different types of medium and message conveyors.

Siegel’s article on the concept of “computer imagination” actually asks the question what is a problem to which each of the tools is an answer. He asks what an e-learning application needs to have an advantage over print. Maybe we need to ask as Siegel asks which actually meets the goal of developing understanding that leads to effective learning. E-book books and readers may not fill that goal or even answer “the question” in an affirmative. The “Scenarios” did however lend themselves to our new tools. While the Blog may be questionable as to whether it is answering a problem it can be used as a starting point for the facilitator. I can be the starting point for discussion topics and survey results to be posted. RSS Feeds really do lend themselves to the scenario computer imaginative tool concept. They allow real time instantaneous responses that have “multiple points of view that are discovered …through asynchronous exchanges” The passing of information and responses can be done as we are doing during class and after classroom teaching has ended. Students can post comments and engage in abstract learning 24/7.