EngageMe - RSS

Jane teachs at a local TAFE (technical college) in three differing portfolios with seven differing groups of students. Phew !

Jane keeps in contact with students by responding to posts made by students in their blogs, which were setup as the introductory key learning activity for each year. A number of students still maintain email contact and a few students contact her by mobile phone SMS messaging.

Anne has actively encouraged students to keep a daily record of class activities and summaries of learning experiences in written fomat via blogging and also employs the use of mobile blogging ( moblogging) which produce RSS feeds also.

To keep track of all of the students blogs and moblogs and to respond in a timely fashion to their updates, Jane has a Bloglines account which keeps her RSS feeds in order and accessible. Students are actively encouraged to access this public facility to keep tabs on what others are writing and reporting also. Jane also saves favourite RSS feeds from a number of sites which may interested her students including links to other students groups within similar age range and interests.

Jane reports that a number of the students with similar interests emerged as a result of their studies, have banded together and formed a community blog using a web program that incorporates forums and other community elements including voting and picture rating. Jane adds new initiatives like this to her RSS feedreader and begins the process of encouraging students to open their own feedreader accounts.