About Computer imagination, RSS and Tech tools for learning

This week we where asked to set up an RSS feed and check out, blogs
and web pages trough the use of this technology...
I have been using this blog for a while, even though i really don't
update as much as i should, so using blogs isn't really new for me,
but RSS is, i (like Anna West said in her blog) was kind of confused
at first as how to set up the RSS "feed", but the first day was good
having the feed to CNN working fine.

On the next I day wasn't that lucky, because most of the feed from
blogs just don't work, and some from the pages too, and I'm not quite
sure why is that, It could be because the explorer saves the feeds in a
folder and then my google reader don't find them... anyway the thing is
that i get an " error, empty feed" when I try so, I went back to look for
the blogs manually. Well even though all the difficulties i think is a good
tool, a good way to check on things you are interested saving your precious
time for something else.

About the Readings I will start with Edgar Dale and his "Cone of Experience".

I really liked the theories of knowledge and the various ways of learning that the proposed in his article, to be honest I was surprised of how useful it is taking into account it's 40 years old age.

The proposal of using different types of approaches to teach something depending
on what fits best each student and situation gives more options on how to give
an specific class, it helps too that the author is not pushy, he is not forcing
you to use the cone method, and even specifies it's limitations, it's flexibility
what can help you do and what don't, some of the things expressed are kind of obvious, but even so more is good to remind them, so we don't let them pass by.

If i where to take these technologies Blogs and RSS feeds and put them into the
Cone of Experience, I will probably had to make another ring, right between the
direct experience and the iconic knowledge, and call it "interactive iconic and
symbolic experience", interactive because is triggered by the student who is the
one who have to activate the feeds, create his blogs, etc.., iconic, because of the now iconic nature of Internet in which we don't issue commands by writing them,
but by "pressing" or "clicking" a button, an icon and because a lot of icons have
their own meaning which the user has to know in order to use them, finally symbolic
because what you read in a RSS feed and what you write in a blog are symbols, words
things of the highest symbolic meaning which represents other realities, and experiences.

Now on to the second Article, "Falling asleep and computer imagination" by
Martin Siegel.

I really don't know if what I am going to say is an answer for a problem, but if I where to use these tools (RSS and blogs) to help me during a course, I could use them
in this way:

1) I would put all the students into create a blog (sorry for stole you idea Mr. Horvitz) or update the ones that already got them and put them specific assignments for the class, so everyone could see them, and that would make them interested in writing meaningful things because their classmates would have to see them too.

2) I would find good articles, web-pages or magazines that talked about good themes
for reflection, recommend to subscribes to theses pages with RSS feeds and include that as a part of my class dynamic.