When you surf the web, you have probably seen little orange buttons on your favorite web sites like CNN, NPR, Yahoo, Google, etc. These buttons are to links to the site's newest postings formated as an xml file. When you click on that button you see a bunch of text that is not easy to read so an RSS feed, also called a site feed or a news feed, is of little use with out an RSS aggregator . RSS Aggregators, commonly referred to as news readers, reformat the xml to make it easily readable. The use of news feeds and readers allows users to find the latest headlines from their favorite sites in one place. There are many varieties of news readers but mainly they fall into two categories, online or computer based.

c|net recently reviewed online news readers check out their reveiw if you are searching for a news reader.

via [Librarian in Black]

Posted by James Fadden at 10:04 AM | Permalink

I think the general sentiment is that the lunch was productive and there was a good variety of faculty from across the disciplines. The faculty discussed many things including:

• using discussion boards and quizzes to check student understanding of reading


• strategies for using discussion boards to start discussions outside of class and continue them after class


• using various tools to free classtime to interact and engage with their students


• frustrations relating to counterintuitiveness of the tool


• reliance on WebCT to deliver their course

• Create a new column of student names in your grade book that you can move next to the column of assignment that you need to enter grades in.


• Lock discussion topics to end a discussion topic. This allows students to see the conversation but does not allow them to post.


• Use the discussion board to gather inclass discussion questions as opposed to emails.


• Instructors can forward WebCT email to their allegheny.edu accounts as a way to be alerted that they need to log in and respond to a student.

Posted by James Fadden at 09:03 AM | Permalink

I will be heading out to the WebCT lunch shortly. I plan on using facts from this Educause document to spur some of the conversation.

In particular the key point that students are least happy with the discussion boards but that faculty are most interested in that tool? Larger Educause report is also worth a read if you have the time.

Posted by James Fadden at 11:41 AM | Permalink

Faculty can now register for the discussion groups on instructional technology.

Posted by James Fadden at 12:37 PM | Permalink

This year we in OET are developing discussion groups for faculty that focus on instructional technologies available at the college. The decision to provide faculty development in this manner is based on a desire to make conversations of pedagogy and technology more central to the instructional technology training program.

While each discussion group will be built around a core group of users, meetings will be open to all members of the faculty interested in the topic. Faculty are encouraged to visit and bookmark the
scheduled workshops page to stay informed of the new learning opportunities.

Posted by James Fadden at 01:59 PM | Permalink