Burp! That was some meal. My compliments to the chef. I have so much left over I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. If feeding the starving people of the world were as easy as feeding my Google Reader then there wouldn't be anyone starving.When I opened my reader today I was totally overwhelmed. There were 75 new feeds and I had no desire to sit at my desk and go through
them. I marked them all read and moved on. I went directly to the blogs that had sparked my interest when I set up the reader and looked for something of interest there. I definitely need to weed through my list of subscriptions and keep only those that truly interest me. Hats off to anyone who can manage more than 2 or 3 subscriptions. This is definitely one of those skills that I will have to build up slowly.One of the blogs that I had subscribed to was Student 2.0. This one had grabbed my interest because it was a blog maintained by students. I was interested to see the types of things they posted and had conversations about. Well, this one that really caught my attention...
Morgante Pell, a high school sophomore and web developer, posted a blog entitled: Of Creativity & Art Published by Morgante Pell on November 19, 2008 in Meta, on Student 2.0, which I just finished reading in my Google Reader. WOW! What is creativity? Is it art? I almost fell off my chair when I read that the author of this blog was only 17. He really hit the nail on the head. Not only about the difference in the meanings of the two words but how school systems and conventionalism squelch it. I agree with him 100%. I'm so excited that I work in a county where we are thinking outside the box through Arts Now and this course Web 2.0. If we want creative thinkers to lead us in the 21st Century we will need to start fostering their abilities that "transcend tradition." Morgante states: "Writing thousands of 5-paragraph essays will give you perfect form and will make you a very precise writer, but it will not make you a great and innovative one. " I couldn't agree more. Check out his personal blog at Newly Ancient, it's insightful.
Yes, your reader will definitely leave you with a full feeling (overstuffed maybe) with plenty left over. Let me give you a hint though. Don't "Mark all as read". Instead, just skim the headlines. I subscribe to over 150 feeds and I HAVE to skim. The ones I want to read, I click on the little star in the left corner. Those are added to my "Starred" folder for me to look at later and will always be there for me. The rest, I then mark as read.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely do not feel pressured to read everything in your reader. You'll go crazy! But do skim over the titles to see what might spark your interest.
"If we want creative thinkers to lead us in the 21st Century we will need to start fostering their abilities that "transcend tradition.""
Amen! I believe that is something that has been missing in instruction - fostering creative thinking. It's not that we don't want to do it, but testing and the burden of pressure of NCLB has made it very difficult. It can be done though as long as we're willing to look at instruction from a different "out of the box" perspective. By the way, I've heard wonderful things about the Arts Now program from Kerry Bryant!
Amen Sistah!!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you and the feeling of being over-stuffed. In the first place, there are soooo many blogs out there to choose for subscriptions, then we must sort through the ones that really have particular meaning to us as individuals. To be honest, I’m having a bit of trouble finding subscriptions that REALLY, REALLY resonate with me. I will read one or two posts and think I’ve hit the jackpot, then things will branch out into another direction and I find little or no relevance within the same blog! I need to continue my searching!
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned Morgante Pell, a high school sophomore and web developer who possesses a real “heads-up” on creativity. I read a post that was very similar by a precocious 14-year old blogger, A Fourteen Year Old Talks Educational Technology. Check him out: http://www.infinitethinking.org/2007/10/14-year-old-talks-educational.html.
He really knows his stuff and talks to us educators with so much conviction, wisdom, and insight. Hard to believe he is 14! In short, he feels that educators who are not using technology to the fullest are actually cheating students. It’s an interesting piece!
As a media specialist, I think it is incumbent upon me to go with the flow of what my teachers and principals “want from” the media specialist. My group is big on the reading component – far more so than on technology. So I need to approach Web 2.0 applications in concert with inspiring a love of reading, with the objective of serving a two-fold need for students.
I think that creating that "concert" is definitely doable. I know from experience it's difficult to get others on board especially when technology is involved and such priority is given to "reading" in the traditional sense.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. The reader feeds are overwhelming. I found that I deleted a whole lot of feeds before I found one that I wanted to nibble on.
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