Following my RSS Reader

Day 1

At first, I felt that using the Google RSS Reader was a little overwhelming. I had difficulty finding blogs and other feeds to apply to. However, I started to think about the websites that I visit most often and from there I was able to add new feeds to my Reader. I am always checking Scholastic, Apple, and the Michigan Grade Level Content Expectations (GLCEs). All of these sites I was able to add to my Reader. Then I became creative in my google searches. I first searched 4th blogs in Michigan and there was not many possibles. Following this search, I made the quest more board and looked for solely 4th grade blogs since I am a 4th grade teacher. I added five 4th grade blogs. The first day that I added these feeds was yesterday and when I was searching through them I felt as if I was reading a newspaper. There were many headlines and content to dig deeper into. I first was drawn to the feeds from Webblogg-ed and the GLCEs since that day I had just been at a curriculum meeting for my district, in which I would be helping to align the GLCEs to the new Core Standards for math in 3rd and 4th grade. I was able to see that Webblogg-ed seems to be much more updated than the GLCEs.

Day 2

Coming into today I feel much more opened minded about using the Google Reader. I was able to take time to look through each of the feeds that I receive. I paid special attention to the five 4th grade blogs that I added to my feed. Two of the five have not updated posts since March and May. I did not find these too helpful since much of the information was outdated. However, two of the other feeds are actually from the same school. I was amazed to see the amount of information shared with families and to the degree of technology used. There were websites with math games and more shared with families, daily homework, spelling words, videos used in school, and even on the actual blog a Twitter following of dates and assignment due dates. I posted a comment on Mr. O'Brien's 4th grade blog about how useful I found it as a fellow teacher. The communication was very clear and creative.

I scrolled through past posts and have saved many of the website games and videos to share with my 4th grade classroom.

I felt that using the Goggle Reader today was much more manageable since I was more open minded. I scanned each one and found the short headlines helpful since I could quickly view the items I wanted to learn more about and those I was not as interested in.

The Scholastic feed was especially appealing since the videos stood out. I did not know that authors record themselves reading books that they have published. I plan on sharing some of these videos with my readers since I am always looking for ways to keep engagement in reading. I have many students that follow series and will be interested to see the author of 39 Clues come to life in the video shared.

I have a classroom website that I update each week on homework, spelling words, newsletters and calendar information. I also have sidebars for each of the subject areas that have games and helpful websites. When my class goes to tech time they know how to login to my Moodle page and from there can click on the site we will be using for the day compared to typing in the long address. I plan to add more sites to my webpage and even some videos that I discovered during my exploration of my RSS Reader today. I found a rap place value video and also a rounding video I think would be engaging to my class.