THATCamp Community College 2015 Notes

Here are my notes from the day. We had a small group for THATCampCC, so instead of sessions we had a longer conversation where we bounced around discussing the proposals campers had made in the morning. We did something like that last year as well and I believe this might be something we continue in the future.

  • We began by discussing doing peer review outside the classroom.
    • Can we do meaningful peer review outside the classroom?
    • Building student bonds outside of class.
    • Students need to learn good criticism skills to be better peer reviewers.
    • Chris Gazzara suggested having students review a paper like they would a film or book.
    • Collaborate is a Blackboard tool for peer review.
    • VoiceThread is an app for leaving comments.
    • SHOULD statements important during peer review.
  • We then discussed prior formative non-stressful learning assessments.
    • Differences between scaffolding and expectations.
    • Can visuals help with assessing prior knowledge?
    • How women use Instagram to bypass the male gaze and invent safe spaces to present themselves.
    • How information literacy is taught at different schools in the room.
    • I discussed cutting down on secondary source requirements.
  • We then discussed annotating silent films, which led to a wide ranging discussion.

Replacing Google Reader With Newsblur

With the coming demise of Google Reader, I have spent some time recently trying to find a good replacement for the RSS reader. Despite all of these idiotic proclamations that RSS is dead and apps like Youtube and Instagram not even offering easy access to it anymore, which is beyond frustrating, I am still an ardent user of RSS.

My usage of RSS has evolved over the years; previous to the past few years, I used RSS for almost all of my online reading. With the mainstream popularity of Twitter, I have been able to move a lot of my day to day reading to tweets. Apps like Flipboard let me read more frequently updating websites at my own leisure. These days my usage of RSS is for infrequently updates websites and for tracking various things, like certain Tumblr users I want to make sure I all their content.

After trying out a number of RSS readers including Net Vibes and even going back to the old Bloglines, which still exists, I have settled on Newsblur for my RSS reader. Newsblur is a modern app that works on the desktop, phone, and tablet. It syncs nicely and is constantly updating and getting better in both performance and appearance. Hoping that Newsblur will stick around, I even put down the $24 for a yearly premium account.

Cory Doctorow is also moving to Newsblur, which I take as a really good sign about its promise. Audrey Watters also has some good thoughts and goes through a long run down of various RSS readers.