Gallery Project: RSS Feed

"As educators and advocates of lifelong learning, we are constantly seeking out new ideas and information to improve our teaching."

For the CEP 416 Gallery Project, I chose to look for webpages that will help me gain new information in a certain area of professional development and subscribe to their RSS feed, so that I can be updated with the freshest and newest content available. I chose to focus on classroom management since this is an area I think I can always work on. I found three websites and blogs that deal specifically on classroom management that I can look at and find out the latest news. I subscribed to the NEA's (National Education Association) Works4Me Tips on managing the classroom because this national organization is very prominent in education, and I especially like how teachers from all over the United States post what works for them, so that others can read and get tips. Another blog I liked was the Problem-Student Problem Blog that posts new articles about motivation, violence, PDA in schools, etc. The third webpage I found was a "Classroom Management 101" blog that posts videos about classroom management, resources, and answers to questions. By subscribing to their RSS feeds and managing them in my Google Reader, I am easily able to quickly browse and read articles from these sites that I find useful, without having to check back everyday to the individual websites.

Before this class I had no idea what an RSS feed was, nor how useful they could be in my future teaching. I will probably use RSS feeds for student learning when students have to research a topic on the Internet. RSS feeds allow students to become active readers in a new literacy age by allowing students to quickly sort through numerous websites to find out what is important or useful, instead of having to look at each individual website to see if their is any worthwhile information. As a teacher, I can use RSS feeds in this same way. By subscribing to a website's RSS feed, I am able to remain up to date on the latest findings in science, for example, so that I can more accurately teach my students. This would also work for professional development, as seen in my Gallery Project. I subscribed to three webpages/blogs on classroom management, so that I can know whenever the pages are updated with new information.

RSS feeds are a good way to connect communities. They can be used to help connect with and communicate with parents. As I talked about in my previous post on blogs, I want to create a classroom blog that involves letting parents know what is going on in the classroom. Parents can subscribe to my RSS feed and be notified everytime something new is posted on the blog, so that they don't miss anything important. In return, if I am subscribed to my blog, I will know when they post back, so that I can respond in a timely manner. In this same way, students can be subscribed to the class blog's RSS feed so that they can recieve a class "newspaper" with headlines and synopsis of student writing, so that they can decide which post would be best to respond to without having to spend so much time reading every post in-depth, which often leads students to not enjoy responding. I believe this strategy will allow for better responses by students because they won't be tired of reading by the time they write their response, since they won't have to read everyone's posts all the way through, they just read the synopsis given by the RSS feed, to get the idea of what the posts were about. As a teacher, this little "newspaper" saves me time and makes it easier to assess and provide feedback on student's work, without having to visit 20 or so individual blogs, to see what students posted.

Why Let Our Children Blog?

Cool Blogs

After looking through many different kinds of educational blogs, Mrs.Perry's 4th Grade Blog really stood out to me. I really liked how it included everything from class pictures, links to other useful websites for students, interactions with special guests, classroom news, and a means to showcase student's work. The blog is attractive and easy to use, with lots of pictures, links and discussions. Compared to other blogs I found, which were cluttered and hard to navigate, this blog brought a whole new meaning of blogging to me. I realized how you can transform this type of technology from personal use and apply it to the world of teaching. It's definitely a good way to extend whats happening in the classroom to the students at home as well as parents. I especially liked the links to her literature blogs and other subject area blogs. She created a different blog for each subject-science, math, reading and history. On one of the literature blogs, the class read The BFG by Roald Dahl, and students posted on The BFG Literature Circle Blog. They answered questions posted by the teacher and discussed the book. I think that this is a great way for all students to participate in a group discussion of the book because it doesn't hinder the shy students from wanting to speak in class and it motivates the other students to participate because its something different than just talking or writing on paper about it... Its cool technology!!

I can definitely see myself creating a blog in the future modeled after Mrs. Perry's Blog. I think blogs are an innovative and convienent way to keep connected to your students and parents outside of the classroom. They can help to build a strong sense of community because students, parents, or I can post anytime from anywhere. I can create a blog to extend what we are learning in the class, and post homework assignments on there as well. I will also use the blog as a means to communicate with parents about what students are learning and what is happening in the classroom, so that parents can stay informed and involved in the class. I loved how Mrs. Perry used individual blogs for different subjects, especially for discussing classroom literature. Since I hope to teach upper elementary, I think that this would be both grade-level appropriate and fun for students. Through my experience working with students, catering to student interest is at the core of engaging student learning. Most of the students I have worked with really enjoy working with technology, so I think working with a blog where students can contribute on a regular basis, will not only help them become literate in a technological world, but also make them interested in the subjects I teach!