Chapter 5

I enter my notes from chapter 5, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts (Richardson) with a feeling of excitement but still some nerves. I am excited to be learning (and more importantly actually understanding RSS and aggregators! With these and other web 2.0 tools I will not only be able to read information on the web, but more importantly organize and contribute to the web as well! This chapter really shed light for me on the concept of reading(following) a blog. I simply LOVE the idea of creating my own customized list with "tags" and then watching the results flow in! I know I will use or at least show students how to do this. I already had a mini lesson with my college bound daughter. She is now set up with her very own Goolge account, complete with Diigo!
I must admit, I do still feel that using these tools is "adding" to my time versus creating more time for me - what am I doing wrong? Does it take a while to feel differently?
The big light bulb moment for me (in this chapter) when the author talks about the skills our students need now - in order to sort good information from bad information. I think his words were: students will need the skills to separate signal from noise. He also referred to it as Reading Skill: Scanning or Reading Skill: Synthesizing. Information Literacy Anyone?

Two other great ideas in this chapter were the ability to tag information for yourself and others - the public army organizing the web and blogging vanity - where you can follow who is linking your, posting your name, or simply stopping by and taking a look!
Last but not least - PageFlakes. I like the idea of a custom created page of information for students - but I am not sure I completely understand the concept. Is it just a web page set up and controlled by the teacher?