Week 3

Google Reader and RSS's

For this week, I researched ways in which I could use Google Reader to help me keep up to date with webpage’s and blogs on the web. Like receiving mail in your mailbox, Google Reader updates you whenever a website or blog is updated. The only drawback is that the site has to have a RSS feed in order for you to be able to add it to Google Reader. You may notice that I have a new widget on my blog now. This widget provides links to the updated websites that I have saved on my Google Reader. The list below describes where those links come from, and how they can be used by teachers. If you want to see all of the new updates for all three of these websites, you can go to my public page by clicking here.

When browsing the internet I choose to go with option three and decided to look for information that I could use which may continue to help me once I have my own classroom. The first site I subscribed to was the Michigan Department of Education. As a future teacher it is important to keep up to date with the latest and greatest news from the Department of Education. This website gives you an update of any breaking news, lets you look at current outlook of the state's education programs, and other types of data from all of the department offices. As an addition to the website is other RSS feeds located in the blue box on the right side of the screen. Those feeds have the MDE staff directory, a section on No Child Left Behind, the State Tech Plan, and more. This website is a good resource for teachers because it provides first hand information from the state so that it makes it easy for teachers to stay up to date.

The second site I added to Google Reader was The Doyle Report. This website is dedicated to introducing and evaluating new and old technology in the classroom. Even though I consider myself pretty intelligent with the current technology of today, twenty years from now I don’t want to be as oblivious with technology as some of the teachers are today. Many of the articles are also very interesting. Some of the most recent articles talk about how the education in the United States compares to the rest of the world and it says that American Teens test lower on Math and Science then other children around the world. As a teacher this is very alarming to see, and it opens my eyes to the importance of my job as a teacher to stop that trend the best that I can. This website is beneficial to me as a teacher because it’s a place where technology and education meet together. It gives current issues that are happening in the educational world and suggestions on improving your methods of teaching with technology. On the right side of the web page there are two widgets which help you browse the blogs by either Education News Blogs or Education-Technology News Blogs.

The third website I added to Goggle Reader was hosted by Scholastic and it’s called This Week in Education. This website is dedicated to helping keep teachers up to date with the educational world. There is a section for parents, students, and teachers; so it is useful to everybody. This site is useful because it’s a very organized (high production) website which basically provides the latest headlines in the educational world. The blogs on the website have the latest headlines of the day in education in regards to politics, technology, and breaking news. I liked this website the best because it provided more relevant information for a teacher, and it was very easy to navigate around the page.

As a teacher I think that there are multiple ways in which RSS's can be of use in your classroom. First if your class was researching any specific topic, then they could add the website to Google Reader so that they are notified of any updates. This is a lot more convenient then checking back every day to see if any new material has been added. This is also helpful to the teacher so that they can teach the most up to date information. Another example of how RSS's can be used in the classroom is for keeping teachers up to date on the educational world. A teacher can add educational websites to Goggle Reader so that they can stay up to date with the Educational world on a local, state, national, or global level.