R/D2 Blogs and RSS Readers(Really Simple Syndication)

My first impression of using a blog was that i felt very professional. It looked as though I was a published writer. There was a very good feeling knowing that people would be reading and analyzing what I was writing. I was instantly publishing to an infinite number of readers. For this I would like to thank the Internet and many people who have spent endless hours putting all of these resources together. I would also like to thank my husband and children for there patience and the academy for ...or wait I digress.
The surprising portion of the feeds to subscribe to was the fact that they were feeds that I had a particular interest in. Coming out of the era of magazine subscriptions as a major source of information, I was glad to see choices other than Redbook or Women's Day. Over the years many magazine sales people have knocked on our door and asked us to subscribe to their list of magazines. There were almost never any of interest to me. The closest they could come to anything science or technology related was Time and some would offer National Geographics. National Geographics is good but quite often not on the list either.
About five years ago I was hired to teach online high school courses. The screens initially were black and green DOS screens that were text only. Even the math problems were a struggle to enter in their proper form. My comment was that for the students this was the same as reading a text book without any pictures and if the students could do that and pass they would not be here to see me. All of my students were taking the online classes in as remedial courses having failed the same course at least once. As time went by the course content and interactivity of student and computer increases. We now had sound,then pictures, then actual video with demonstrations. Dale's Cone reminds me of the progress that was made in the learning tool (the Internet). The computer itself is not a one size fits all is expanding to include almost all of the sections of the cone. RSS feeds can take you on video field trips to the Egyptian ruins or tour the NASA Space facilities. Students can Blog about there ideas with other students with the same interest even if they live in a small town with limited resources. Educational Television is available at the click of a mouse with a Feed reminder. The key is to have these resources available and as a teacher to share these resources with our students.
Last week was the first week of Aviation Summer Camp. The students and I had a awesome time discovering aviation and its' practical links to math and science. We used link from the NASA website to demonstrate airflow over different wing configurations. This visual aid via computer simulation with the ability to reconfigure our wings with just the click of a few buttons allowed us to experiment in a short time frame and move into our designs. If we had to build models of our different airfoils and tested them in a wing machine of our making it would have been quite time consuming. The students were able understand the principles they needed to design their own model aircraft with correct ratios for fuselage and wings. All designs were then tested and evaluated for fly characteristics. After evaluations were complete they then began to evaluate solutions to their flight problems. We again referred to the simulations for possible solutions before final design changes were made. All aircraft made successful flights before the end of the week. The problem to which each of these tools is an answer is that we as graduates of summer aviation camp can form blogs with RSS links to continue to share our knowledge and to continue to use our feeds to tap into the vast knowledge base that is there. Our job is not to have students reinvent the wheel in every class every year but to learn how to use that wheel more efficiently and in different ways that maybe no one has thought of before.