Week #2 Reflection: The Cone

Blogs and RSS Readers

I have enjoyed working on the blog so far. I like how it is easy to change the design and settings to fit myself and my personality. I like how I can really make it my own. I find the format easy, but I would like to have more interaction with other people on it. I get the feeling that if this blog were to be used as a classroom tool there would be more interaction and discussion on the blog itself. I am still getting used to the RSS reader. The concept of putting so many bundles of interest together in one spot certainly puts the work out of searching for like sites of interest and keeping up with the blogs that I have signed up for.

The Cone

Blogs and RSS feeds fall into the iconic experience on Dales’s Cone of Experience. I would argue though, that depending on how the blog is used as a teaching tool it could involve characteristics of the other levels as well. Blogs give us whatever the administrator wants us to see and to read. If I was using a blog in my classroom to enhance student learning, I would make it as pictorially rich as possible with as many links or uploaded sites as possible. RSS feeds lend themselves to be a continually changing source of information that pertains to the concept that is being taught. As a history teacher, I want history to come alive for my students and give them a reason why they should want to learn about the past in the first place. I can embed video clips into my blog that are of high interest to the student. I can link my blog to a virtual tour that they would not have been able to go on in real life. I can facilitate discussions online and allow students to give their opinions and feedback openly and in a safe and friendly environment. I believe that this type of interaction on a blog will lead to students adding to their knowledge base and begin to make concepts that were once foreign to them concrete in their minds. They then I would argue have taken the iconic ideas portrayed by the blog to a different level and made the concept symbolic in their minds and then be able to take those symbolic concepts and make abstract use of them.

Computer Imagination

Siegel talks in his article about how “computer imagination must also achieve some desired end.” I would use both Blogs and RSS feeds together to create a site that was interactive, incorporated various styles of media, like videos, demonstrations, simulations and sound. I want to engage my learners and motivate them to want to delve further into history and see the themes and patterns of the human race. I want them to debate topics using sound sources and be able to defend their positions openly in an environment where they can be free so to speak. I would want my students to be able to control what they share and be able to change their minds if other facts about their topic comes to surface. To me this kind of discourse between students takes their learning to the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.