Intro to RSS

I can certainly see how using a RSS feeder can help collect information in an efficient manner.
At first I had a difficult time thinking of what exactly I would you such a sorting hat for. I started off my subscribing to Maine Today because I was in the mindset that an RSS was essentially to be used to gather news. I quickly found out that the scope of this feed was huge. My feeder was packed with updates with so many stories that I found it hard to look at them!I then narrowed(or thought I did!) my search and signed up for a Red Sox feed. Now that was more focused but still capturing stories that I had already read or had no interest in. I need to play around a bit more to see if I can limit the scope of the topic, say trades or injury report, from one site or multiple sites for that matter.

I did get the hang of the pretty simple organizational system of setting up folders. That was helpful! Very similar to the document storage used on PCs.

I am excited to become more familiar with the various application of these social / time saving tool. I really like the ability to create a public page for sharing feeds that may be of interests to others. I envision this as a means locate great sources that other teachers have found and are using. The recommended sites that come up when searching for feeds has already been very helpful.

Portaportal Resources

I plan to use my portaportal to provide resources and sites for students and families.
The organizational system that allows you to group your sites should make it pretty easy for students and families to locate sites that are relevant to the content we are working on.

Portaportal

Social Bookmarking! One more wonderful collaborative tool of the Read-Write Web.

I have an account with Delicious which I use to store some high use sights, but I have found Portaportal to be even better at finding and then sharing sites that others have found interesting/relevant.
I like the easy set-up and organization on Portaportal. I have begun to bookmark a number of sites but could spend hours exploring and discovering new ones!

Field Trip to BLOG

I have been venturing around cyberspace looking at the variety of blogs out there. I am both impressed and a little overwhelmed with the way this resource is being utilized. I found myself “hopping” from one blog to another and feeling that I was in danger of bookmarking so many that I would never be able to find a particular one again.
It was really interesting to get ideas on how different educators are using blogs within their classrooms. I really enjoyed one third grade teacher’s blog that had her silent reading time set up so that kids could discover and read other kids work on blogs. I found that to be a very authentic way of teaching a form of communication that will be relevant to our students.