Feedly, Wiki and Other Imaginative Uses of Web 2.0

I’ve always liked the idea of a blog, and the setup has been real simple, but after setting one up, I have been terrible in keeping up with it. I enjoy reading blogs that embrace my interests. I like the immediacy and “personal nature” of them and how they connect like-minded people with information that is relative to personal interest. Our adoption community uses blogs to document travel experiences, and they connect us to others. They are an endless source of fantastic information we share with one another and have grown our community tremendously!

I was really excited to use Feedly! I have a bazillion bookmarks and this allows me to organize them in one place! But approaching it all at once (especially if you don’t check for a while) can appear overwhelming and time-consuming. This is how I feel about Twitter; I just can’t keep up with it. So, we will see how it goes….I am hopeful! The set up was simple, I simply cut and pasted my URLs into “add content” and really liked how I could organize my feeds into categories. I have a question in if I “subscribe” to a blog, will it automatically show up in my feed?

Although I frequently reference Wikipedia, I wasn’t completely familiar with the idea the any user can edit a Wiki. After setting up my Wiki, it is a tad disconcerting that anyone reading it could make a change. I envision that Wiki for my personal use would be handy when working with a group, but as a source of information that I put together, it is strange to think someone could change it. I guess this is the difference between the ideas of Web 1.0 that considers the web more a “publishing” platform and Web 2.0 considering it driven by the user.

Dale’s Cone is a range of learning experiences that encompass first hand, observational and symbolic experiences. Feedly and blogs often link users to observational experiences that are more “iconic” while depending on a user’s ability to comprehend the many symbols that represent ideas plentiful on and inherent to the Web.  To gain and productively use available information for these resources, a user would need to be fluent in working back and forth between both their observational and symbolic experiences.

As mentioned in the short tutorial for Wiki, this platform could be used to facilitate and streamline group work, allowing each group member to made additions or changes on his or her own time that can be easily communicated with the group. RSS feeds can be used as we are using in class, linking our classmates’ blogs in one category allowing us to quickly view all at once to keep up with recent postings. I like the way the feeds can be organized into categories and imagine that a teacher could suggest different sites for students and have them organize them appropriately for easy reference when needed. A teacher could assign a project in a certain content area( or across content areas) utilizing several web sources organized into a category specific RSS feed for students to use as reference as needed. Class assignments and progress could be regularly maintained on a blog or website that could be linked in an RSS feed that a student could check regularly. It’s a great way to link a lot of information that is referenceable as needed and at different times.