Mike Kaechele

Author: Michael Kaechele

  • Thing 2

    I am out of order but after looking at other blogs, I realized I misses this part of the assignment. I think what makes a good blog is that it is about a topic that I am personally interested in. I am not going to waste my time reading about something that is irrelevant to me. For education blogs I enjoy ones that give practical advice and examples of things that they are using in the classroom.

    I have already mentioned Skype in a previous blog, but I was very excited to find that others are using it. Two new sites that I found today that I could spend all day on are David Warlick’s Landmark Project and Cool Cat Teacher. These are examples of great sites for collaboration with other excellent teachers and cutting edge applications of Web 2.0. My only problem right now is feeling overwhelmed with new thoughts and ideas!

    I think that the two main ways that blogs enhance existing websites are by the links in them and by letting people share their personal ideas, experiences, and opinions. They are kind of like call-in talk radio. I think it is obvious that blogs are very simple for anyone to self-publish anything with incredible access for the world.

  • Thing7–RSS

    I like the RSS feature alot, but I am having trouble getting it to work properly. Everything I try to sign up for ends up in Microsoft feeds under my favorites instead of on my Google Reader. I can’t figuire out how to change the settings for feeds to make them go where I want them to go. Sometimes I just hate Bill Gates!

    I will definitely use this daily to keep track of news, sports, and tech stuff (assuming it isn’t blocked by my district’s server!). There are some on-line tech journals that I would also like to subscribe too. This tool will help me to do my own informal professional development by keeping me visiting the journals with the latest news and ideas for my classroom. The easier it is to access these sites the more likely I am to actually use it and read the journals.

    This also helps me to see how the Utopian school in David Warlick’s article could happen. I am addicted to reading (or at least opening and skimming) every e-mail sent to me at school and I think many other people are too. With RSS it could easily and quickly become a habit to read each other’s blog posts and collaborate.