RSS: The Need for Feeds

Setting up RSS feeds that are relevant for your classroom or personal needs are relatively simple in Google Reader.  You can quickly create feed folders to keep your topics organized. It is also easy to add those folders as a gadget to your blog or wherever you would like that content to show up. Please feel free to browse mine on the right entitled "Children and Technology Feed Subscriptions."

Since the district in which I teach  is migrating towards becoming a Google Educational Domain, I want to experience using as many Google Apps as possible. In addition, being the Technical Coordinator for my building, I feel compelled to research as many tools as possible and relay them to our classroom teachers so they can find which ones are relevant for their classrooms as well as be able to provide support for them and their students. I also teach all the computer classes for grades 1-5 and need to find lessons and tools to apply to those classes as well. Therefore I used Google Reader as my feed tool of choice.

How does an RSS feed tie into all of this? Because it is an elementary setting, most likely the fourth and fifth grade students and teachers would benefit from using them. Teachers could add a feed gadget to their websites with resources for both students and parents alike by topic making it easy for them to keep track of updates. Those teachers electing to set up class blogs or individual student blogs can easily follow posts as students add them via subscribing to the students' feed. Being paperless has been one goal of our district for a long time. We no longer send home fliers but rather communicate through blast emails and our websites: district, school, and teacher sites.We no longer send report cards home but use an online gradebook with a parent/student portal. Now teachers can easily read student work on their blog sites and comment on their posts as well as preview them before being published thus adding to our goal of becoming paperless.

NETS-S standards 1, 2, 3, and 4 can be easily applied to using RSS feeds: 1. Students can construct knowledge by combining what they learn on a topic from different feeds. 2. Today it is important to network with others and to know how to do so efficiently and effectively. RSS allows students to communicate and work collaboratively. 3. Students can apply research and information fluency via gathering and evaluating knowledge gleaned from their feeds. 4. Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate materials from their feeds. 

Thinking of the possibilities using this tool is making me hungry...I think I need some feeds.