Affinity Groups and Digg Reader

My Affinity Groups

I decided to join the affinity group EFL Classroom 2.0. Thousands of teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are members in this 10-year-old community, which provide them with a plethora of resources. I am most interested in teaching EFL since that is what I did in Greece for many years and what I would also like to do in the future. I am confident that I have a lot to contribute to their discussions and they will also help me stay up-to-date with the latest developments. 
Another affinity group I found interesting is the Flipped Learning Community, a professional community for educators using Flipped Learning, something I'd like to master. Members share lessons and submit videos, thus adding to the growing library showcasing Flipped Learning. I'm especially interested in their Flipped Learning Research and Mastery Learning groups.  

Digg Reader

Being inexperienced with news readers, I can only tell you about my experience so far. I found it user friendly; first, it is easy both to subscribe and unsubscribe. I was able to choose its categories or make more specific searches according to my interests. I made folders to classify my feeds and I already saved some of the articles I read and found interesting. I also “digged” and what I found can reappear when clicking on the “diggs” button. That confused me a little as I thought it was the same as the “save” button. By clicking on “popular,” I also saw what is popular from among my feeds, which is a useful feature.

Question #1: Now that news readers/RSS feeds are gaining ground, are we still going to wait for email newsletters? Can news readers replace email newsletters?

Answer: Yes, I think news readers can and will replace email newsletters. Personally, I had various problems with email newsletters since I received a lot of junk mail trying to keep up-to-date by receiving newsletters from my favorite websites. Now I can very easily subscribe to a reader, like Digg, choose and sort information and, most of all, I can read it comfortably (No more spam). And I don’t have to use my email for subscription (More privacy).

Question #2: Can teaching resources shared on different sites be used by other teachers in the form they are? 

Answer: I think that teachers have to modify any resource they find according to their teaching style and mainly their students’ needs. Just choosing the correct grade or the specific grammar point they are targeting may not be enough. More modifications may be necessary so that the teacher can use a resource in the most meaningful way for his/her class. Discussions among group participants can also provide ideas on how resources can be further adapted or enriched.