RSS in Education

Using RSS Feeds in Education

One of the classes that I regularly teach at my university is a freshman-level Computer Concepts class. This class poses several challenges for me:

• The students have a wide range of knowledge about computers, from those who have problems understanding how to use a mouse to occasional students who have A+/Net+ certification and who have decided to take the class as an "easy" elective. This makes it difficult to find activities that can engage everyone in the class without leaving anyone behind.
• It is designed as a general education class, required by many different majors in the university, and as a result, many students are there simply because it is a required course, with no real interest in the topics we cover. It can be challenging to find activities that will engage everyone in the class.
• Our university has a focus on trying to improve the reading and writing skills of students, and this class lends itself to that kind of activity well. I typically ask students to write one short paper (1-2 pages) each week on a current topic of interest to them in the field of computers and technology, in addition to a variety of other activities.

While I have used RSS extensively in the past, I have gradually moved away from it in preference to Twitter. For myself, I find that Twitter is useful because it gives me very short messages that come straight to my phone. I don't have to remember to open a specific site to view the information, and I can use embedded links in the tweets to open the complete story if I want to read it.

This assignment in RSS feeds made me realize that RSS is still alive and well (despite my neglect ;-) ), and that it is relatively user-friendly as a Web plug-in.

I have a new quarter starting up this Monday, and I intend to use the assignment outlined in the attached video for those classes this quarter. I think that allowing students to choose articles that they find interesting personally will help accommodate the range of understanding and interests that are in the class, and using an RSS feed can help the students find articles they are interested in more quickly.

As a final note, my university does use APA as the standard format for research papers. Having students provide the reference with each of their papers will help prepare the students to use APA in other, more formal research papers.

Elements of Educational Technology

The article "The Meanings of Educational Technology" was interesting to read. I found that it described many things I had already understood about the use of technology in education.

The one thing that stood out to me the most is related to the fact that this article was written in 2004--almost a decade ago. It seems to me that the practice and use of technology in education should have evolved more in the last ten years, as more teachers and schools have adopted technology as learning tools rather than teaching tools.

Ten years ago, few students used cell phones, and tablets like the iPad did not exist. Google was primarily a search engine challenging Yahoo!, and social networking was mostly limited to listservs, RSS feeds and personal blogs. The interactivity of Web 2.0 technology was in its infancy, in the form of MySpace. The word "technology" typically referred only to personal computers and PDAs, and very few PDAs were Internet-enabled.

That said, despite the age of the document, its writers were very forward-thinking in that the concepts outlined in the document are still valid, even with today's wide array of software and hardware technology.

Welcome!

Hello, everyone!

My name is Kim, and I live in Louisville, Kentucky.

I have been using computers since I was in my high school's Computer Science club in the 1970's--before personal computers existed. While I majored in French in college and in my first round of grad school, I turned to computers when I could not find a job teaching French. I now teach in the Computer Science department of a private university.

I taught French as a Distance Education course (by snail mail!) for several years while in grad school, and now I teach and design online courses in Computer Education courses--mostly Microsoft Office, but also database design and HTML. My department is in the process of putting several degree programs entirely online, so I am doing this degree to help with that. I am also very interested in learning new ways to incorporate technology into the concepts classes that I am responsible for.