LMS and RSS

I tried exploring learning management systems today by trialing how to make my own, unfortunately the system was over-loaded and I couldn't contain any further other then the home page. However, being a user of Blackboard and Moodle, I believe I have enough experience and information to make a few comments about LMS.
LMS would be an effective tool in the classroom:

• Allow all students to stay connected with one another


• All students receive the same information, questions and answers


• Parents can also have access


• Great communication tool between teacher, parents and students

However, while there are positives there are also some negatives

• Even though it's a school-based website (in the mind of students) bullying can still happen


• The student must have access to the Internet at home


• LMS could collapse


• Could/would be very time consuming for the teacher to set up and successfully keep it running

In my opinion, LMS would be like a 'virtual classroom' for older students.
I do not know if I would personally use a LMS within my classroom, I think I would prefer the virtual classroom layout.

RSS

I created my own RSS with Google Reader when we first started our blogging. Like Kate Pollard states in her blog on this topic...'blogs and RSS go hand-in-hand'.
It has the fantastic feature of 'following' allowing updates from your favourite websites, blogs, wiki's, forums etc to be emailed to you, notifing when there is something new for you to read.

I believe if you were to use blogs within the classroom you would also allow students to becomes members of an RSS (e.g. Google Reader) in order to keep updated with other students work, or to even keep the teacher updated with the students process.

I personally wouldn't use an RSS within my classroom because I wouldn't use blogging with an early childhood class, just because the majority of them have no concept of typing...yet!