One thing that I found to be very useful that we learned this week was how to use RSS. I set up my account through Google Reader and was pleasantly surprised to see that the Reader is not blocked by my school district. As a result, the feeds I chose to follow will come in handy for me professionally as an educator. Some of the feeds will provide me with teaching strategies and professional development opportunities. Others, such as the Flickr White House feed will be used in my classroom, maybe once a week, as we follow what the president is up via pictures. A few of the other feeds include various historical articles and news features, which can actually be read with my students and used to facilitate class discussions.
Besides subscribing to Google Reader, I also really like creating a photosharing account using Flickr. Overall, my Flickr account was easy to create and, like the Reader, it is not blocked at my school. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I could envision using photosharing to have my students tell a story and “think like a historian” and tell a story visually. Since students can have school access to Flickr, such a project (and others for that matter) would be feasible.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Like you Jenny, I too made a Google Reader account. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to start. It is really cool that you already have ideas of how you could use this with your classes. I'm not coming up with any good ideas for myself, but I like your idea of using it with your history classes and the White House feed. I think I will let one of our 5th grade teachers know about that one. Thanks for the good ideas!
ReplyDeleteI also started a Google Reader account. My star find: a This Day In History feed from the History Channel. I've been looking for something like that for a long time and RSS is perfect for it. I'm going to check out that White House feed, sounds kind of neat.
ReplyDelete