Comments on: Should we require school employees to have RSS readers? – Part 2 (more questions)

By: Cyndi Danner-Kuhn

Cyndi Danner-Kuhn — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:19:40 +0000

Well, I am a little late discovering this post, but felt compelled to comment anyway. I teach in the College of Education at Kansas State University, in fact, I teach the Technology for Teaching and Learning class that all education majors are required to take. Good or bad, I am the only one who teaches the class. That being said, I “FORCE” my pre-service teachers to listen to one educational podcast and read one blog post each week and reflect on their website blog about what they discovered and learned. You will notice I used the word “FORCE”. If I did not attach an assignment with points, they would not do it. I have to force them into this world. There are so many discoveries for them to make about teaching, education, technology, etc. etc. I hate that I have to require it and attach points, but it does get them started and at least some of them eventually get the point and continue on their own. Sadly, requiring teachers to use RSS would be the same situation. I wish it were not, but it is. Frankly I even do better with my busy schedule by subscribing via email to my favorites. Although, I do subscribe using RSS and Google Reader to many more, but my favorites come via email. I check email multiple times a day and I just get sucked in and read the posts and learn. Clearly, I need to be tricked sometimes too.

By: Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:23:33 +0000

I feel that podcasts and blogs are the best way that I can stay right up with the trends and best practices that are needed to be the best I can be and give my customers/faculty/students the best educational experience possible. RSS feeders are great. I do believe teachers should be required to have a feeder, but if that is all that is required, then we might as well just skip it all together. Sure there is a certain percentage of the teachers that would like it and enhance their performance and the students’ experiences; however, there needs to be follow through. My biggest issue with a lot of PD is that it has no follow through. Great, have your staff signup for a reader, but let’s create reader clubs. These clubs would be the teachers/administrator’s venue for telling each other about what they have read, technology integration tools/apps, and implementation ideas for their classroom. Without reporting and discussing, many teachers would not do anything besides check “sign up for a RSS reader” off their back to school list. PD is not about individuals, it is about the entire staff as a whole. Making each other better should be everyone’s goal.

By: Toby Holman

Toby Holman — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:33:06 +0000

I’ve always been of the approach with technology (online or other) in education not to enforce a choice on teachers or pupils but to make the technology enticing to let them make the choice themselves.

To ‘enforce’ teachers to use RSS could have such great potential. Key messages, dates, meetings, notes, useful websites etc could all be linked to.

However, the real potential comes when teachers go beyond what is given to them to seek for themselves. This past year, I gave a presentation about ICT to new to senior management teachers and, in particular, PLN. Not one mentioned use of rss, but radio / teletext / papers. I guess, in their own way, their own RSS.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:57:01 +0000

I know there are roadblocks – our district falls in the ‘when in doubt, block it’ category. I worry about the one way approach – requiring RSS feeds. Which feeds will be required? Must it be feeds from a predetermined list? What if I find a great feed that isn’t on the list?
RSS is a tool, but since we all learn in different ways, should we be required to use the same tool?
I have this funny picture of everyone in my building running to their computers at 3:15 to read their RSS feeds instead of talking to each other.

By: Marci

Marci — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:58:33 +0000

Mark — I know, right .. students probably feel the same way. Hard to push forward with soooooo many roadblocks, so much fear … kills motivation to be sure.

By: Mark Barnes

Mark Barnes — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:23:52 +0000

Marci, LOL, one of the best comments of all. Same in my district. In fact, we often bring in people to demonstrate some cool “new” technology, like Blogger, and it will be blocked.

This is a seemingly never-ending problem.

Thanks for making me laugh with your irony comment. Truly classic.

By: Marci

Marci — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:59:01 +0000

I’m struck by the irony that much of what is on my feed is blocked by my school’s filter … which means that much of my free time in the evenings/weekends is spent on professional development that I cannot accomplish at work.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:39:57 +0000

Your heart’s in the right place, but you CAN’T force people to learn. You can force them to fill a seat, you can’t force them to learn. You can’t force the kind of authentic curiosity that makes YOUR rss feed useful. YOU get something out of it because of what you bring to it, without that, it’s just another pointless chore.

By: Jude

Jude — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 21:49:03 +0000

How would requiring teachers to use an RSS reader in anyway affect their behavior? They can set one up, but that doesn’t mean they’ll actually start reading blogs. As a school librarian, I promoted blogs as much as possible with teachers and administrators and I provided one-on-one instruction about setting up RSS feeds, but so far as I know, no one changed their behavior. I couldn’t even get them to set up websites when I walked them through every step of it. Most teachers are blind to the advantages. When the tech teacher set up blogs with his students, he asked, “Who will your audience be?” and they named me as the only one they thought would regularly read their blogs.

By: Suzie Martin

Suzie Martin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:59:04 +0000

Rather than post my verbose opinions as a comment, I have written them in my own blog post. Here is the URL:

http://randomthoughtsofsuzie.blogspot.com