Thing #9 RSS Feed Search Resources

Now that I'm somewhat familiar with RSS feeds, I've really enjoyed exploring all the search options available. Bloglines seems similar to a Google search in that there are many results with each topic searched. However, many of the results are unrelated to the topic so I wasn't very impressed with this option. I could have spent days exploring Edublog's award winners. I particularly liked the blog Creating Lifelong learners. Mathew Needleman is an amazing teacher and I was excited to see that I share many of his educational opinions. In his most recent post, Mathew shared an assessment chart that is so simple and very eye opening. Reading the red dots vertically shows a struggling teacher where as reading the red dots horizontally shows a struggling student. Topix.net was not my favorite. I found it extremely cluttered and unappealing. Technorati was my favorite because it's so organized. You can search by post or blog and in many different categories and subjects. I found it very user friendly. All in all Thing #9 was a very fascinating journey!

Thing #8 RSS Feeds

It took me 2 times to go through Thing 8 and I still only have a small handle on RSS Feeds. Granted, the first time I went through it was 8:00 p.m. which my body seems to think is my bedtime. I subscribed to American Idol because that's my favorite show at the moment. I really enjoy that I can read everyone's new blog postings without having to open up each one to see if there's anything new. I see how teachers can use this new technology by setting up RSS feeds for students to follow current events or useful blogs. It makes sharing information and collaborating much more accessible to the web 2.0 user. I feel like I still have a lot to learn about how to take full advantage of this application but right now I'm just enjoying the fact that I know what an RSS feed is!

Thing #7 Google Tools

Wow, I've only known Google as a search engine and never even paid attention to anything else it offers. I have tried Google Maps before but I usually use Mapquest to get directions. So it was a fun experience exploring all the different Google Tools available for free.

I created a Google Calendar and customized my own iGoogle page. I really liked the To Do list and I added it to my iGoogle page, but I have no idea how to put a copy of it in my blog. I tried right clicking, copy and pasting but I couldn't figure it out. I can see how some people would really enjoy the different games it offers although I'm not a game player (no time, maybe when I retire!) I added Simply Recipes to my iGoogle page because I love to cook and am always looking for new recipes.

I saw a few gadgets that could help in teaching. One of our units in Kindergarten is "Nighttime". It would be fun to track the Current Moon Phase during and after the unit. I also liked My Stock Portfolio. Economics teachers could use this application and have their students create their own stock portfolio and track its progress over a period of time. There is so much more to explore in Google! I wish I had more time.