Chapter 3 and 5 Response

Chapter 3
Most students will be familiarized with the use of computers, like turning them on and off, but not necessarily using programs and material like a blog. This is why Richardson says it is important to start small. With this in mind you could first create a slide show or present an entire lesson on how to use blogs. If a teacher has access to internet and a computer than they should try to teach the students as a whole to understand the blogging concept. Then with the knowledge of using blogs, and each student understanding you could then create your own class blog. You could use these blogs as a whole during computer class time, in you own classroom as centers, or just as an entire class together watching the teacher use it and taking turns. The more students that have access to this out of school the easier it would be to use a blog, but if this is not possible you could just use this as much as possible in the schools.
Another interesting fact I read about and was intrigued with is the idea of how safe a blog can be. You can limit the access of blogs to just certain people, so if it is just those certain people reading and writing responses on this blog, you should not have to worry so much about others and what they may say. This is especially important for the younger students. Blogs may even come easy to some students who may have some experience with certain internet sites and previous blogs they have done themselves. This is more true for older students, they could have experience with setting up facebook or myspace accounts and already know how to somewhat create their own blogs.

Chapter 5
Until now, I would have never have known what RSS is or what it stands for, Real Simple Syndication. With RSS, the content comes to you instead of you going to find it for yourself. Richardson states several reasons why RSS is important and why to use it, but more importantly that it just comes right to you, for example the weather, upcoming events, news, and so much more. This could be used in the classroom as like an opening day event. Every morning you could log on to the internet and your RSS to get the weather for the day, and use during Calendar time in class. Vanity feeds is a great way to use this source too. You and the students could do these vanity feeds together in the class to see who else has similar interests as yourself, or even to find another class who may be reading the same book as you, and your two classes could blog back and forth to one another.