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Monday, January 28, 2008

RSS feeds

Hi again,
Omg! I think I've fallen behind . I need to complete lots of assignments and prepare my own presentation. This post is to complete my assignment in blogging for educators. I've watched a video about RSS and read an article related to it. I'll answer some questions about RSS in this post.The first question I need to answer is about what I understood and didn't grasp about RSS.
In my opinion RSS is great tool to check what's new on your favorite blogs.After reading the article I mentioned in the beginning of my post,I created an account in bloglines and subscribed to my favorite blogs.It was really nice to have seen all the new posts on one page.

Another question I need to answer is about how it's important in the classroom.Well,I need to mention a mistake I made last year while blogging with my A2B class. Apart from our class blog, I asked my students to create their own blogs to post their assignments and reflections.Of course I needed to check them. Can you guess how I monitored their blogs? There were twenty blogs and I checked them one by one by going to their blogs every night!! Therefore I wasted a lot of time checking and commenting on their assignments.If I had known RSS readers, I'd have spent my time on the other things. In my opinion it's important in the classroom both for students and teachers.If there 's a class blog and the students are required to keep their own blogs, the teacher and other students can subscribe both to the class blog and students' blogs . They can check whether there's something new or not without wasting time( unlike the way I did it:). Students can also subscribe some other blogs related to EFL and check their RSS readers whether there's something new or not in a really short time.

Finally,I definitely believe it can be helpful in my blogging experience.I'll definitely use bloglines to check what's new either on my favorite blogs or on my students' blogs to save time and learn how to set up an aggregator to help people who are interested in my blog in order not to make the same mistake again:)

I hope I answered all the questions successfully.I'm really looking forward to reading your comments:)

Happy blogging
Beyza

9 comments:

Mary H said...

Hi Beyza,
You're not behind: week three (Tagging and RSS) has just begun and you've already posted your reflections!

Your experience monitoring your students blogs illustrates why RSS is such an important concept for educators. We need to keep track of what is happening on many blogs, so using a feed reader helps us to use our time more efficiently, and to spend more time commenting on learners' blogs and guiding our students to help them learn more.

Why did you choose Bloglines? If you have time, I would love to know why you choose it over others, such as Google reader, Pageflakes, and so on. By the way, you are doing an amazing job keeping up with various sessions ;)

Hugs,
MaryH

Anonymous said...

Dear Beyza

In my country we say something like it is better to learn from the mistake than never learn at all. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. I am very sure that this time you and anyone attempting to check students blogs will benefit from RSS. Did your students have to check their partners blogs as well?. I suppose they invested a lot of time too.

Consuelo

BeyzaY said...

Hi Counselo,
Thanks for reading my post and posting your comment.You're really right. I learned the importance of RSS from that mistake.Yes,my students in that class had to check their partners' blogs and post some commetns.Unfortuantely they also lost time checking each others' blogs just like me:).I wish I had known RSS at that time.
Happy blogging!
Beyza

testecarla said...

Dear Beyza,

Just like you, I wish I knew about RSS and tagging potential in the classroom! It would have saved me many nights of sleep. Thanks for sharing your experience and reflecting upon the uses you can give to RSS now that you grasped the idea.

Cheers.

jo said...

You know even after having watched the video (but I haven't read the article yet) I hadn't thought about how I can use RSS feeds in the classroom. I just used the information for myself (through my yahoo)with blogs I was interested in. But that is exactly how it could be used. It will save me loads of time- I have done exactly the same thing, checking each students' blog one by one. And it may even encourage students to comment on each others blogs. This was something I tried to encourage the students to do but they never really did. Now I see that maybe they were discouraged by the sheer laboriousness of checking other peoples' blogs, some having no new entries and maybe gave up trying to comment after that. Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

Rss feeds save my life from even a more chaotic routine and contribute immensely to my knowldge. I use igoogle and a "Rss feed in tabs" to keep up with the blogs I like to read. it is just great

joseantonio said...

Hi Beyza,
I see you are totally into the world of blogging. Keeping track of your learning is something good to do because it helps us learn more and the way you chose to do it, helps others learn too.
Congratulations on your first blog. I really liked it.

Jose Antônio

Patricia said...

Hi Beyza,

This blog of yours is great! I wish mine were this good. I'd like to have you in my links, ok?
I'll share with you my comments on RSS as soon as I learn a bit more (I'm afraid I'm a bit slow).

Patricia (La Pato) from Argentina
http://reflectingonweb20.blogspot.com/

Sharon said...

Beyza,
Glad to see you have discovered RSS - it is a teacher's lifesaver. Very nice blog.