Thing 5: RSS feeding
July 7, 2009 by greghd
Nate Wahlgren actually got me started using an RSS reader last year. One evening while on dorm duty Nate told me how the FA Wikipedia page has been hacked in the past to add odd, funny or offensive things. He and others have taken up the charge to correct errors as they arise. How does one know if the page has been changed? He show me how to get a reader feed that will alert followers to any changes. I then started using the RSS feed to follow my class blog so that I could see when students had updated their own blog posts or added new material to our class blog. My reader is part of my email program so I don’t need to go to a website like Google to see the changes.
Now I’ve set up the Google reader online which allows me to follow the feeds from any computer. This is useful as I’m sharing our laptop with Jenny this summer and she needs it most. As I browse the new material I was surprised to find on Infinite Thinking Machine that there is an organization called Teachers Without Borders which, like it’s predecessor and Nobel Prize winner, Medicine Sans Frontier (Doctors Without Borders) is working to improve educational opportunities and access for kids and teachers in impoverished areas of the world.
The second feed I read was a student post on Students2oh called “Don’t Save the World” about students traveling the world looking for good college resume building activities and not looking for their own passions. Quite a contrast.
If I ever get students to China I’d like them to do something meaningful for the Chinese but I also hope they will do it because it is memorable for them. I would think any student who chooses to leave home and travel abroad has already got the interest to make a major commitment to their education at least.
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“any student who chooses to leave home and travel abroad has already got the interest to make a major commitment to their education at least.”
Leaving home has no distance units.
When a kid gets on the bus in the AM he’s leaving home is going to be given the opportunity to make a difference each day.
Commitment.
When hasn’t that been important since the dawn of keeping track of such things?
In golf, you must commit to your swing.
Also true in other sports.
The problem seems to be the lack of a consequence for either not making one or making the wrong one and not wanting to be responsible for it.
Life favors the bold.
A movie, about 15 years ago, had this line, “Sieze the moment”
We need to do it so our students can make responsible decisions.
Peace
Greg: I love the Back to China Blogroll!! Wow! – Jane Lounsbury