RSS can be a difficult concept for some to grasp right away - what questions do you have? What didn't work or doesn't make sense? How might you use RSS in your personal or professional life? Find anything in your searching that you'd recommend to others?
For me the concept wasn’t difficult to grasp because I capture updates through RRS feeds on a different site. I did have difficulty using Bloglines though. Several of the directions did not work for either the websites I visited or the system I am using. IE wanted to add it to its own site and not Bloglines. It took a long time and trial and error to determine that my Bookmarklets do not have an icon but instead a little tab above the task bar that’s labeled links and I still cannot get that to function correctly. I found that good old copy and paste for the feed url worked best.
Using RSS, whether for personal or professional reasons, streamlines the entire “check in” process because all you have to do is go to one site and start clicking! I have used it to increase my personal knowledge of content areas and to get ideas for teaching strategies.
I have some great sites to recommend. For ELA teachers, Grammar Girl does a terrific job explaining the complexities of the English Language and she’s just plain fun! For History/Social Studies teachers, History Tech offers lots of strategy ideas for the classroom. Everyone should be able to find something interesting and valuable to teaching on both How Stuff Works, National Geographic News and Edutopia. I hope you find this helpful – happy hunting!
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Thanks for sharing the Grammar site. Loved it (and now using it on my own blog). BE-A-U-tiful flowers!! Makes me want to go back to Hawaii! I felt the same way about bloglines, and use the RSS feeds more also, glad I'm not the only one.
ReplyDeleteI love the social Studies site! I will be using that soon! I also got entranced by the Edutopia site. I think Skype would be a super cool thing to use in social studies in your classrooms. It's probably much cheaper than a field trip too!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the ideas and the sites to visit. It is amzaing how pictures can so quickly take us to a special moment in our life. I alos chose such a picture in my blog.
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking back to History Tech! My goal is to really find things and ideas that help SS teachers do their jobs better.
ReplyDeleteYour readers might also find Social Studies Central useful. They can find it at:
www.socialstudiescentral.com
On that site is a link to a Tip of the Week that teachers can sign up for and receive via email.
Thanks again!