A link to my new wiki: shanawolstein.pbworks.com.
I’ve used blogs before and though blogger isn’t my favorite
site (I love Wordpress!), I still love the format of blogging in general. As a
creative writer though, I was nervous about creating a new blog. I find it hard
to explain exactly what happened but I noticed that in writing my post for this
first week, I approached it differently than the average discussion board post.
Even though I don’t think people will be seeking out this blog, the lurking
eyes of the internet have made me more aware of my audience. I was also excited
we were assigned to create an RSS because I was an active user of Google Reader
and had not found a new RSS since Reader’s demise. I found Feedly very easy to
use although I miss the visual layout of the Google Reader (a static list of
blogs on the side in addition to the previews in the center) whereas Feedly
only seems to have a side pop-up menu. However, I’m sure this is something I
can get used to as the rest of the feed is very similar.
I really like the idea of wikis but I’ve found in my usage
of them for this class so far, I’ve only used it as a kind of interlinking blog
post. However, for my job I’m working on up-dating a wiki of office knowledge.
I think using a wiki like this in the classroom, where students are pooling
information about subject matter and in glossaries, a wiki could be extremely
useful. It can also be useful in terms of solidifying a sense of community
outside the classroom that encourages more meaningful interactions in the
classroom.
While I think that Dale’s Cone can be used to evaluate the
use of Feedly, in terms of it’s ability to create an easily accessible pathway
to resources of limitless potential, it’s easier to speak in more direct terms
about it’s application in terms of blogging. Blogging allows for a variety of
levels of the Cone based on the content of the post. Text posts, that use
abstract verbal symbols and higher learning levels, can be combines with video
demonstrations or videos of dramatized experiences. As I wrote about on my
wiki, sharing blogs can lead to direct purposeful experiences by allowing for
conversations and interaction with other bloggers.
As far as “computer imagination” is concerned, I think that
Feedly is still more limited in it’s use. Feedly offers a service that allows
you to stay up-dated to other data-delivering services (whether they be blog or
website) but doesn’t allow for user-created content outside of creating tiers
of organization. However, I could see how an instructor could use this as a
tool to understand those sources. Keeping track of websites that up-date on
basis of quantity as opposed to on the basis of quality of the content, may
allow for an English teacher to question the proposed audience of those articles
in order to understand their reliability as a source. They then would answer
the question of how knowledge changes over time and what kind of information
may be over-produced. However, blogging is a tool this is hard to limit in
terms of imaginative uses. One of my favorite blogs that have transformed how I
view the genre, are those that act as experience. Many artists are able to use
their blog space to create a controlled delivery system for art that takes
advantage of multiple media, whether they be video, audio, or text-based, as
long as they can be posted into a straightforward digital space. Blogs, as
classroom tools, thus allow for a wide variety of uses with the emphasis on the
ability to continue conversations outside of the classroom and to allow for a
wide variety of supporting media. For me, this would be the essence of the
problem that blogging answers.
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