Chapter 2: Fostering Choice and Inquiry through RSS, Social Bookmarking, and Blogging

Chapter Summary:

     This chapter continues with the focus on offering students choice when it comes to writing in the form of topics, genres and styles, and most importantly the publication (p. 15). The authors then offer examples of how students can share their writing online, which gives them a broader audience and hopefully more accountability. The authors then discuss how research and writing have evolved, offer examples of how students can collaborate on pieces of writing, and then discuss specific options for online writing and sharing. The authors offer 3 ways to spur student inquiry, collaboration, and writing: RSS feeds, Social bookmarking, and Blogging.

Making Connections

     One way to spur writing is to help students access reading material that relates to their interests. By setting up an RSS feed, students have the ability to access news stories in a real time setting without searching all over the web. Another tool for online collaboration is social bookmarking sites such as delicious.com. These allow multiple users to share a workspace that saves useful websites and resources. This is essential in a digital writing workshop because students often move from workstation to work station. Finally, using blogs as the tool for a Digital Writer’s Notebook is becoming an easy way for students to share with the teacher and the world their progress as a writer. Sites like blogger.com, wordpress.com, and edublog.com allow for students to share their work on a daily basis and receive feedback in real time in the form of comments.

Classroom Implications

                
     I have used all three of the topics discussed in this chapter. For example, I have had students set up RSS Readers using the now-defunct Google Reader to follow websites and other students blogs. I had them check their RSS feed on a daily basis and reflect on an article or story on a weekly basis. One good way to use social bookmarking sites like delicious.com is to have group members create a site they call can access and then save all links and resources to that page so they can be accessed at any time. With the growth of Google Apps, and the advent of Google docs, websites like delicious.com are becoming less necessary. With Google Apps, students are also able to save links, and collaborate in real time. Finally, every student in my class is required to have a blog and to follow other students on their blogs. This extends the audience of a student’s work and allows other students to review what their peers have done, hopefully spurring new ideas. I use blogger.com for this, but there are many options that are just as good.