Organic Learning

Will Richarson recently posted a compelling example of how to use RSS in the classroom in his thoughtful Pageflakes example of the crisis in Darfur. Pageflakesis a tool for pulling RSS feeds from many different sources into one place. Read how Will pulled al the feeds together in his blog post entitled, “Using Pageflakes as a Student Portal”. I used this page to learn about the crisis in Darfur, about which I knew very little. What makes this page about Darfur relevant and real is that it changes everyday, as new information is posted. I was able to learn about what the news agencies have to say here and also in Sudan, but also what conversation is going on about Darfur, with pictures and video. Because of this learning, I noticed that the iTunes Music Store had a free download from the NBC special, Crisis in Durfur with Ann Curry. The only thing I would wish could be added in Will’s Pageflakes presentation would be to include the RSS feed to Google Video’s coverage of Darfur, because many districts allow Google Video, but block YouTube. (Will put the YouTube feed because there is no “Page Flake” to display Google Video.)

I can’t help make a connection to the upcoming InfoTech student competition for elementary and middle school students, or even high school students in the student showcase. Our elementary and middle school competition involves telling a digital story about heroes. I think the crisis in Darfur could initiate some deep thinking about today’s heroes working in places like Darfur. How about a story on the Doctors without Borders?