Commoncraft and Google Reader

I missed this the other day but thanks to the RSS feed I have to the blog, Lucacept, I have not missed out. I have mentioned the Commoncraft plain English videos before and they have produced another one, this time about Google Reader.

I started my first exploration of blogs after listening to Heather Blakey speak to a local school library group. Heather was one of the first exponents of teaching using blogging technology. She made the subject sound very “do-able” and full of promise. We had Outlook available for us to subscribe to blogs at my school. I dipped my toe in water and subscribed to a few blogs, Heather’s being one, and “lurked”. Last year Camilla Elliot presented a great workshop on Web2.0 and included a lot more tools. She encouraged everyone present to “rollup their sleeves” and “have a go”. So I subscribed to Bloglines amongst other things. I was suddenly in a very interesting world where people were sharing thoughts, ideas, expertise and news. I found it quite amazing and started to see just how powerful the world of the internet was becoming. I didn’t look at Google Reader until taking part in the SLAV Web2.0 program this year. By this time I was not sure if I really saw any advantages in changing from what I had already. There are many teachers, however, who still don’t understand blogging and RSS feeds. Subscribing to the blogs of others interested in education, via RSS feeds, is a great way to start. Google reader is an easily accessible tool and all of the teachers I work with are familar with some of its options. Some familiarity is always a help when introducing new ideas. Thanks to this little video above, I have a very simple and clear way to introduce the topic to them.