How could this impact on teaching and learning?

So, are there really any practical educational uses? It’s not all hype again is it?

Eva Kaplan-Leiserson examines the range of options for using RSS in learning environments - for example, keeping in touch with learners' writing by subscribing to their feeds, keeping the learners informed via your own course-related feed, and using the system to manage storage of, and access to learning objects. This taps into Alan's idea that maybe in the future, you'll be able to ‘assemble dynamic collections of Learning Objects’ all on your own! Or, you might one day use the technology to collaborate in a project workspace.

Alan Levine has shown that photo blogging can be very useful for art classes, and conference communication. Many educators are using the audio blogging features in LearningTimes to report back on conference experiences. The latest merlot.org conference had dozens of news feeds from individual bloggers, all poured from Stephen’s bottle! A professor in New York State has been delivering her courses via MovableType.

Mary Harrsch also outlines some ‘Killer App’ RSS educational possibilities: a teacher could share his or her ideas for lesson plans, or keep in touch with the latest subject area news, a school superintendant could stay up to date with news updates from schools in the local area, or a researcher could keep the world informed of daily progress.

I mentioned earlier the post-excursion idea, for an adult literacy group. Will this classroom practice evolve one day into online radio or video channels, via multiple authorship blogging?

Because RSS can be written and read from many devices, not just your desktop computer, perhaps such collaborative communication methods would be useful for people working in industries, who need to use mobile devices for their learning.

Blog to learn?

Anne Bartlett-Bragg in the last edition of Knowledge Tree, put together a very thorough description of a range of approaches to using blogs in education. In Anne's opinion, blogs in education generally represent a wide intention to ‘enrich the learning experience, and provide an opportunity for learners to shift from surface to deeper levels of learning’.

Anne sums up the range of educational blogging in the categories of: group blogs, published writings, personal opinion publishing, academic blogs, research journals, and learning journals.

Anne’s own teaching/learning experience has been mainly with the learning journal. Her understanding, that reflection is a vital part of the learning process, led her to encourage deepening reflection through online journalling.

She noted a strong comparison between her five stage model of deepening awareness through individual blogging, and the five stage model of community development that Gilly Salmon reports in her ‘e-moderation’ work. There’s also a similarity here with the currrently popular social constructivist perspective - that collaborative reflection leads to new knowledge buildings.

Virtual skyscrapers, full of knowledge, shared, constructed and easily accessed by your community of learners. Now there’s a cyber skyline view!