Asynchronous Communication Tools

Today I am discussing blogs in my wiki. I love blogs, at first I thought I would hate them and it would be a waste of my time but it is like talking to someone that actually listens. Students could use blogs in the classroom to turn in assignments or to talk with other students and read about what each others thoughts are. Blogging is a great asynchronous tool. For those who do not know what asynchronous is (Asynchronous tools enable communication and collaboration over a period of time through a different time-different place mode) 
One can post anything on a blog that they want others to know or one can make their blog private so no one can read it. Blogging is a great tool and I am so glad I got into blogging. (:

My Feedly

1. What do you think about Feedly? Do you find it useful?
2. From your reading of your feeds, did you learn anything that you used in your future classroom? Provide an example or two.
3. Where did you comment? Did you get any response when you commented?

So last week I created a feedly and I liked it! It is very organized and useful. I can keep up with educational blogs and websites. I noticed in my "top stories" the flat connections was listed. I loved seeing that there. 

From my readings I found this student who made a video to speak out at his school, and I loved this. I hope my students feel like they can reach out to me. I would love to allow students to make videos to reach out to other students in the school. 

This story was called An Autistic Boy Speaks Out and yes I did get a comment back to my comment from the blogger who posted the story. (Cool Cat Teacher Blog)

The next story I read and commented on, was about making ones classroom as addictive as a game. It had 5 tips that a teacher could use to make school more fun like a game. One of the five tips was making school an event like FarmVille. I could use some tips for making my future classroom more addicting like a game, so I enjoyed reading this blog. On this blog by Douglas Kiang, no one commented me back. 

And lastly I commented on MindShift which was my favorite, because I really enjoyed the topic. It was on how important free play is for learning. I totally agree that free play is important for children! I could use this in my future classroom if I taught a lower grader. I would allow free time in my classroom everyday! Students need time to be creative. My instructor Janice Newlin commented on my reply to this blog.