More on Blogging and RSS

Here's a picture from yesterday's session with Will Richardson.

My head was spinning after a whole day of RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, podcasts (I'm going to need a couple of hours to figure out Audacity), making videos and screen casting. Here's Will's reflection from his blog Weblogg-ed about his experiences yesterday. In any case, I'm feeling more confident and ready to share this stuff with my teachers.

So here's a suggestion for all of you who attended the symposium on Thursday. Over the holidays, come in and read my blog. Leave comments. Will Richardson suggested that that is the best way to start - by reading other people's blogs and responding to what they have written. Another thing that he said yesterday is that you need to have a blogging experience before you use it with students, just so you get a feel for blogging and know what it entails. Lastly, he said that if you are going to use blogging with your students, that you have a goal and a purpose (you know, those expectations) and just don't do it because its cool (but it is!).

I'd also like you to consider starting your own personal blog. It is really easy! Using this blog hosting site (it's run by Google), you can have a blog up and running in minutes. Here's the link on how to do it (you need an email account but I suggest that you use your personal one rather than the board account. I use my gmail account).

Don't have anything to write about? Here's another Richardson tip - write about what you have read in other blogs or news reports. In fact, to start you out, check out my Blog Roll on this blog where I have added a number of links to some cutting edge teacher librarian bloggers. You can read what they have to say and write about it in your blog. Or you can make a personal blog. That's what my daughter did when she lived out of the county for 2 years and wanted to keep her friends and family up-to-date on her life.

The idea here is to just start. Be selfish and play around for just for you. Once you have gotten comfortable, then you can start looking at ways that we can use this with kids so that they can make connections with others - at their school, with other schools and ultimately with the world!