RSS Feeds - The principal came into my room the other day and was asking what I knew about Twitter. Her main focus was on whether or not the audience could subscribe to the twitter or had to go looking for each post and whether or not the viewer could comment. I tried to explain to her what I knew about twitter when I realized what she really wanted was an RSS feed. She was looking for a way to broadcast information to parents and staff via the internet and web enabled devices for campus updates. She was looking for a newer technology than the autodialer we use now that calles parents home telephone numbers at night and plays a recorded message. But, she didn't want to get bogged down in technology and she wasn't excited about 3100 parents writing comments back that she would have to read. Now I have to put together a proposal for how she could use an RSS feed from the school's website to reach her audience. I'm actually excited about the prospect of several feeds for particular audiences. A Campus News for parents, Campus Update for staff, School Closure notice for both groups when we have a snow day, maybe even the department chairs could assemble information that was for staff students and parents interested in say art shows, musical performances, athletic could post game scores...
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Kiley, I agree with your principle in wanted a new way of reaching parents through the internet. My AR project will be to get parents more involved using 21st century technology. I believe tools like RSS feeds and other web tools will encourage parent involvement. This will give parents an opportunity to voice their opinions and organize diferent parent groups.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a lot of interesting opportunities to communicate with colleagues and community, I wonder if business could become involved? Hopefully it won't involve too much extra work on a daily basis, it would be great way to tie in EL families if it could be translated into other languages.
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