RSS Feed

After having my computer crash, I finally got my new laptop! I am able to update you on my latest obsession of my CEP 810 course... RSS! Let me tell you what an RSS is. It is an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication" and is basically a personal website that contains your favorite blogs and updates to your favorite websites. It is a quick way to see new items of interest online without wasting time looking through all of your favorite websites for updates, when many won't have any. In the past 6 months or so, I have noticed a little orange RSS button on many websites and I have had no clue what that button was for. Now I know and I enjoyed my time collecting feeds from my favorite sites to put on my RSS reader, Netvibes. Below are some images (created using Jing) of my various feeds including educational blogs and websites, world news, sports updates, and entertainment highlights.

In my educational tab above, I included the four required feeds: Technology and Learning, NPR Topics: Education, Weblogg-ed, and Literacy Education Updates. These sites are continuously updating posts and articles on average once or twice a week. NPR tends to have news articles about the politics of education, Tech and Learning displays new technology products that are available, Weblogg-ed is a blog discussing technology in education, and the Literacy Education blog for English language arts teachers. Of these, the NPR feed was of most interest to me because I learned of many interesting current issues in the teaching world, including bullying, grading systems, and the controversy over educational reform. I plan to continue to view this feed and many others mentioned to help better inform myself on the profession of teaching and learn of new free technology features that I am able to use in my classroom.

I also added my own feeds, shown above, as I explored websites with RSS capabilities. These include the EduTech Today Newsletter, Sudoku puzzles, the weather, a calculator, my teacher calendar from Brookwood High School, Wild About Math, ISTE Connects (this also had a blog about tips for new teacher bloggers!), Media Infusion, Rhyme Rhyme Results (songs about math), and Teacher Tube. One of the blogs that I subscribed to on my RSS is an educational math blog called "Mathematics and Multimedia" by Guillermo Bautista that focuses on school mathematics. His post entitled "Free Tools Every Math Blogger Should Learn" is what hooked me to subscribe to his blog. It contained tools such as WordPress, GOOGLE DOCS!!, Scribd, GeoGebra, Google Sketchup, CamStudio, and many others. As you can see below, I commented on this post on how much I appreciate that he created this collection for new math bloggers, such as myself. I continue to observe his posts, he updates about once a week, and I plan on trying out some of the new resources and free technology I've discovered! (I mentioned some of these on our MACUL discussion post.) I am already using Google Docs, when working on lessons from home, instead of emailing the documents. I have also looked into GeoGebra for my notes and assessments. To continue this in my CEP class, I will look into Google Sketchup and CamStudio for my SIG project.

One of the blogs that I subscribed to on my RSS is an educational math blog called "Mathematics and Multimedia" by Guillermo Bautista that focuses on school mathematics. His post entitled "Free Tools Every Math Blogger Should Learn" is what hooked me to subscribe to his blog. It contained tools such as WordPress, GOOGLE DOCS!!, Scribd, GeoGebra, Google Sketchup, CamStudio, and many others. I commented on this post on how much I appreciate that he created this collection for new math bloggers, such as myself. I continue to observe his posts and try out some of the new resources I've discovered!

Being a concerned citizen, I continuously check up on the local, national, and world news via the internet. It was nice being able to contain all my favorite sites on my Netvibes page, such as 11Alive (Atlanta TV news), AJC (Atlanta newspaper), Click on Detroit (to keep up news in my hometown area), CNN, E! Online (celebrity news), Food Network (daily recipes), 955 the beat (Atlanta radio station), and Delta and Airtran news.

I also am a sports fan and enjoyed seeing all the highlights from ESPN and BigTen football games, including MSU! I coach golf at my high school, so the PGA feed keeps me up to date on who is wining the Ryder Cup and the mini golf game keeps me entertained.