Week 2 Reflection

When Blog appeared and came into vogue in China many years ago, I caught up with the trend and used it to communicate with my friend. At that time, I just realized that Blog is a good tool to share your experience and emotion with others. Since that time we always had to spend a lot of time on studying either in school or at home, this tool had become a valuable way for us to communicate. So almost every day my friends and I would write something on it and made comments to each other. Comparing with surprises or pleasant, I think our feeling about Blog at that time was more about thankful.

Unlike Blog, this is my first time to use an RSS Reader this week. I knew this tool long time before but I never used it. So after I created a Feedly account and followed the instruction to subscribe to both my classmates’ blogs and some other feeds, I feel so surprises. Last week when I wanted to look my classmates’ blogs, I had to click the link one by one. But this time, by using Feedly, it become much more convenient, especially after I download a Feedly app on my iPhone.

Putting aside the Blog’s or RSS’s features itself, I think the process that we using Blog and RSS for learning are made us go through all of these three experiences, the direct experiences, iconic experiences, and symbolic experience. I use a SmartArt below to explain.

Especially, the last two steps can be a cycle. That means, in the process we use Blog and RSS repeatedly, we are constantly involving in almost all parts of the Cone of Experience.

I quite agree with the list that Siegel gives about The Web’s Strengths, and I think that Blog and RSS can achieve a lot of them. Different from the single model that some tools have, such as the old Wikipedia, which can only search the explanation about some concepts, Blog and RSS actually break the wall between people and create a comprehensive information environment. Like by using RSS, we can individually choose the information we are interested in or need, and update them easily and quickly. On the other hand, by using Blog, we can effectively link together. In this point, the “effectively” means we have so many ways through multimedia, and the “link” means we can provide information, exchange thoughts, share and spread ideas through Blog. As Siegel says, “It’s not a single feature but a coherent set of concepts. This is computer imagination!”