Podcast: My life, my feed

How many feeds do you have? I’m not asking how many you subscribe to, rather how many do you own? Do you have a blog or two? A del.icio.us account? Have you posted a YouTube video? Do you have a podcast? Share photos on Flickr? All of these sites and tools create RSS feeds. It occurred to me that when you roll all of those feeds together, you’d really have something that encompasses my entire online identity, a Life Feed if you will. That got me thinking about what it will be like for this next generation of students. As they enter our classrooms, their lives will be public in ways we have never even considered yet. Take my son Aiden for example. Hundreds of photos and a handful of videos and he’s just a couple of days past three months. Am I really going to care if his teacher posts a photo of him on the class website with his name underneath it? Find out in this podcast!

Direct link to the show

A few links to go along with it:
My Open Book blog post
My Life Feed

3 Comments

Rachel Boyd
4/14/2007

I really like the idea of a “life feed” and enjoyed listening to your podcast. I guess at the moment I am all unbundled and around the place, and most of my feeds aren’t all in one place, however between my personal edu blog and my class blog I bet they are there.

Listening to your podcast I really do feel lucky to be living in New Zealand. As yet (touch wood) we don’t have the lock down that seems to be happening in America etc. Everything is very much up to the individual school etc. Some schools have sites blocked and others don’t. Our parents sign a permission slip for their children and their photos to be portrayed on the internet and this is usually no problem. In other schools however parents are very concerned and some classes are having trouble getting class blogs (text only) up and running.

With the parents in my class I think a sensible approach to talking to them about our blogs/internet useage really helps. And because I don’t make a big deal out of it all, neither do they. I show them excellent examples of what is already out there, talk about the benefits, talk about the problems/disadvantages and then recap on all those benefits. And let’s face it there always is so many more benefits these days!

Communication from then on is the key, if parents have concerns I encourage them to see me straight away. Educating the parents is also important as perhaps in the future their child’s online presence will contribute to them getting their dream job etc.

Certainly our students are “digital learners” and we need to stop being precious and scared of the technologies and start weighing up the positives and negatives, working through these and finally embracing appropriate technologies in rich and meaningful ways for our students.

Thanks for your posts, I will be an avid reader from now on

Kind regards, Rachel Boyd
http://rachelboyd.blogspot.com/
http://room9nelsoncentral.blogspot.com/

Dean Shareski
4/19/2007

I’m with you 120% on this one. My experience is nothing but positive. My 8 year old has a blog and all my photos are online. My feeling is that if someone was to be malicious or evil, they will. The Kathy Sierra thing doesn’t sway me. There are lessons to be learned about how to interact in a digital world but most are common sense and really are applicable in all of life.

The small minute occasions where bad things have happened are so overblown in my opinion. The internet is made for publishing….why not take advantage.

Bill Bass
3/30/2008

Hey Steve, I was looking back over my podcasts and found this one. I’ve been working on trying to help students publish their work online for the past 3 years and have been looking at it in much this way.

I have that same comfort level with living the “digital life” and having a life feed. But I also have the same concerns about the future with my children. I guess concerns isn’t really the right word. I just want the best for my kids. My 4 year old twin’s pictures in lots of places online and I’m just not concerned. I may regret that at some point, but not now.

Incidentally, I’m one of the guys you had dinner with at METC in St. Louis. Just thought you might want a frame of reference.

Thanks,
Bill

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

Leave a comment