Jennifer Lau

GED 512

Journal Entry #2: Diggs Reader and Affinity Group

No Longer A Dinosaur?

I’ve always seen and heard people talk about checking all of their newsfeeds and how many subscriptions they have.  One parent I had was sharing with me that all he did every morning before work was check all of his newsfeeds and then finish them throughout the day when he had a spare moment or two.  I thought, “How hard is that?” I check the weather and news on my phone, too and it takes me about 10 minutes to read the headlines and see how hot or cold the day is.  Well, apparently I was doing it all wrong.  I was called a dinosaur! 

“Rather than click on your daily news app and then the weather app and if you have some spare time, wait for the website links you type into Google on your phone to load, why not read it all from one place?” he asked.  “One place?  Impossible” I told him.  I figured it was out of my realm.  After all, he was a computer programmer and wrote out scripts to teach the computer.  I’m a teacher trying to keep up to date with my students.  He named off a bunch of apps that were capable of housing all of your newsfeeds, but I didn’t pay too much attention because I was so blown away by such an absurd idea. 

Here I am now.  In my web design course asked to try it out.  I was skeptical; resistant.  How would I possibly have so many feeds I’d be interested in following?  Well, to my surprise, it is quite amazing.  Not only do I have everything housed in one place, it actually updates itself and gives me a chronological list with titles of the articles.  I don’t have to search.  All I have to do is scroll and click.  It has actually taught me a thing or two about what I can add in my teaching and classroom activities.  I can learn from others who are in the same boat as I am with the new Common Core Standards rolling out and incorporating technology more so into my curriculum to prepare my students to the future.  This is why I joined the affinity group groups.diigo.com/group/classroom20.  Classroom 2.0 shares with me some obstacles teachers have had with ipads, the do's and don'ts with ipads in the classroom and what I can do with the apps and ipads in the classroom.  All in all, diggs reader was a great idea and now I have a way of organizing all of the feeds in one place.  The most important thing, I feel, from this diggs.com reader is that now I can feel less like a dinosaur.  

Q1:  What do you hope to gain from the affinity group Classroom 2.0? 

A1:  I hope to get up to speed with what teachers are doing with the ipads they use in their classrooms.   I hope to also get some ideas to share with my colleagues about ipads and their apps.  It is also a struggle for veteran teachers to jump on board with ipads in the classrooms which makes it hard for my first grade team and me to implement these new skills when others are so resistant.  

Q2:  Do you think students would be able to create either a blog or a diggs reader for the classroom?

A2:  I had a colleague who taught Kindergarten start a classroom blog (moderated by the teacher and parents).  She would start with a general question of, "What was the favorite part of your day?" and move along the year with questions like, "Why is it important to be a good friend?" "How can you be a good friend?"  She told me that of course it started slowly, but as they became more familiar with the keyboard and had parent support, students started to blog more and discuss it in class.  This helped her class become more close knit and friendlier to one another.