Seek Find Be

Bikers=Readers

Bikes without brakes and gears, know as Single-speed bikes have made a come back. I’ve been told they require the rider to make their way around the streets and trail old school, using instinct and quick twitch response rather than the overly cautious and limiting  brakes and gears of modern brakes. I interpreted David Parry’s writing on Blogs for Learning regarding the technology of reading and writing in the web 2.o world to mean that students need to effectively use brakes and gears before they can read like bike riders without gears or brakes.

If I had a dollar for every adolescent who raced into and out of web research without making meaning, I’d be able to feed the world. Students who are capable of reading often never get beyond scanning text. I agree with Parry’s view that RSS ( “Rich Site Summary,“ or ”Really Simple Syndication“) can teach students to slow and focus their reading. Specifically, when students scan results from specific feeds from multiple news sources (on topics they’ve determined with the support of their peers and teachers) they have a perfect opportunity to get beyond the click and skim web reading (or riding in association) and settle into to deep, close reading that will continue to be the cornerstone of metacogntive reading comprehension (kids knowing when to read fast or slow). There still a place for those slow rides up steep hills in a low gear!

RSS 101
Step 1, get a gmail account; 2. play with watch google reader; 3. watch and learn as the web reader (empower by RSS technology) brings specific topics all the time. Its like googling i in quotes 24-7-365. This helps kids read news they seek and avoid the stab in the web research so common for today’s adolescents.

RSS stands as just the kind of tool to empower digital native students to make improvements in the hyper-changing world. Once integrated into professional learning for teachers and used in our schools, the speed of RSS can assure that students go slowly, reflect while researching and, continue  to read closely and make meaning.