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Update: This same task can be accomplished by aggregating a number of RSS feeds using RSSMixer.com. RSS Feed: Chris Duke Reads/Writes the Web
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As an educational technologist working with a large number of faculty and staff, a significant challenge has been to find a way to share with others in a relatively simple manner the worthwhile information I find while sifting through a ton of useless information, posts, news items, journal articles etc. I mentioned the range of reading and writing I do on the web in a previous post, “Sites of Interest (AKA I read & blog too much).”

I know other educational technologists have written about PageFlakes previously, including usability critiques, but I realized I can very easily publish all of my shared news feeds I tag in Google Reader, my bookmarks, my blog posts, and my twitter entries to a single PageCast. That publicly available PageCast shares, in one fell swoop, everything that I’m publishing and reading on the web.

Actually, as I’m thinking about PageFlakes, the PageCast can address an issue I’ve experienced in the Intro to Computers class I teach plus the need for classroom blog aggregators to make the blogging experience more useful in the classroom. See: Blogs vs Discussion Boards, and similar post/comment thread in the EduBlogger Ning Community.

Since I decided to blog on general educational technology issues, there’s a few thoughts I’ve had but not yet blogged that I’d like to share. The first one is . . .

In the April 2007 issue of Technology & Learning, Jeff Utecht (who blogs at The Thinking Stick and U Tech Tips) suggests the problem with blogs is that many educators do not understand them. From Blogs Aren’t the Enemy, Jeff writes:

If we look at blogs as nothing more than electronic journals - replacing written journals - than I can understand why educators do not “get” how blogs work . . . Blogs are not about writing, they are about a conversation . . . if you do not bring the conversation back into the classroom, they are no different from assignments written on paper and handed in to the teacher for a grade.

Jeff continues the article by highlighting the importance of dialogue, the conversation threads that happen between blogs, the importance of bidirectional comments from learner to learner and learner to teacher, and

If you are blogging with your students . . . I encourage you not to think of blogs as writing assignments, but instead as conversations that invite feedback from a variety of quarters on any topic.

I understand and agree with every bit of it. My question is, however, “Within the context of a classroom, if I want to facilitate discussion among and with my students, if I’m interested in facilitating a thread of conversation, why shouldn’t I just use a discussion board?”