Week 2 Reflections

This is only my second experience as a “blogger”; I set up a blog while I was working in North Carolina and Rhode Island this summer for two reasons: I wanted to keep family and friends updated on my experience and I wanted to document the experience for myself. I do not read friends’ blogs, or even their numerous facebook status updates, and do not plan to continue blogging for personal reasons. I think it’s a great tool, but not for everyone!

This was my first experience with RSS feeds; I had heard of them and noticed the icons on various Web sites, but that was the extent. I feel a little overwhelmed with the numerous unread daily feeds, but think I might enjoy it once I fine-tune my subscriptions and become more familiar with customizing Google Reader to fit my needs. Generally I get frustrated when technologies try and take care of things for me (I’m used to going to each Web site I’m interested in), but I think this may be helpful!

Blogs fit into the demonstrations level of Dale’s Cone of Experience. “A demonstration is a visualized explanation of an important fact, idea, or process” and blogs are written explanations of significant stories, feelings, and memories. Like a specific, thorough demonstration, blogs contain descriptive words and informal language that communicates clearly to its readers.

RSS feeds fit into the exhibits level of Dale’s Cone of Experience. RSS feeds are compilations of articles, posts, updates, etc. that are read by “spectators” - a common feature of exhibits. When I hear the word “exhibit”, I think of a museum where people are walking around individually or in small groups and nodding, frowning, or thinking deeply to themselves as they interpret the paintings. The feeds are these paintings and we can interpret the information how we choose to. If we are not interested after reading the tag line and first sentence, we can move on. If we are interested, we can click the link to read the full story and explore the Web site more!

An imaginative educational use of blogs would be to post various math problems that students can read and reply to. I’m a firm believer that if someone can explain a math concept or process to someone else, that they themselves have a solid understanding of the concept or process. For example, when studying integers, I could ask students to first go find a Web site with integers, i.e. the Weather Channel, Google Maps, etc and propose a question. Students would be required to reply to other student’s questions and explain their thought process and answer.

An imaginative educational use of blogs would be to subscribe to various Web sites that offer numerical, or statistical, data. We focus a lot on real-world application in our math classes and utilizing everyday resources in the classroom is very effective. For example, when studying mean, median, and mode, I would ask students to follow the Micihgan State Spartans basketball RSS feed. We could look at the team statistics, the players and team as a whole, and analyze various points, i.e. free throws and three-pointers. We could find the high, low, and average of the season for the team, as well as the high-scoring players.