DIGG Post #1

Looking over my Digg reader, I am presented with some decent items and some pretty mediocre ones. Most of the good blogs come from teachers, be them well-established or not, rather than educational sites themselves.

For example, I read an interesting post titled "I am a secret book lover," which mused about forcing kids to like reading. The simple conclusion was that you can't, and should not. That being said, it made some interesting points about she herself not really talking about her love of reading with her class, which sounds a tad backwards, as I am of the mind that these things should be modeled for our students.

Another post spoke out against traditional note taking in favor of given materials like transcripts. They argued that it allowed for more of an opportunity to ask questions, rather than being glued to a page. Once again, I'm not sure I agree with this either. I think putting pen to page goes a long way in terms of memory and processing, and I feel like given notes would just give students and opportunity to tune out.

The last one that stood out for me spoke about the futility of grades, albeit traditional ones. It focused on formative assessment, as it allows for a more holistic style of grading. This is a bit iffy for me, as summative assessments do provide nice baselines.

Overall, I'd say that poking through some blogs was rather uneventful, as it didn't really find anything of much use. 

Digg reader itself is relatively easy to use, though there is a bit of a learning curve. I like having everything in one place, but I'm not sure if it's essential. I don't think I would use it in my classroom, as most of the material I'm finding for my content area is not great.