Thing #10

from squidoo.com

RSS feeds are very cool and fun to use. Prior to this class, my friend actually made me create a Google Reader and subscribe to his favorite sites. I have never used it since creating it because I had no reason to follow the sites that he likes. Since doing this Thing post, I cleaned out the sites that I do not want to follow and added a few that I like. I created a folder for "News" where I have sites like CNN, TIME, New York Times, BBC, and France 24 (the last two are my favorite international sites who do not always take a favorable view of America, but it is interesting to see the news that we make in other countries because they do not usually make our news.) Then I created a folder for "Education" where I subscribed to a few blogs, some that were listed in the activity description. Just for the fun of it, I also subscribed to my own 23 Things blog. 

Some things I like about RSS feeds is that you do not have to go to each and every website to check for new news updates. For example, I may not be interested in everything that the New York Times posts about, but if I check my feed every morning or twice a day, I can quickly scroll through it and see everything that all of these sites posted. If something interests me, I can open it in a new tab and continue scrolling. My friend would check his feed every morning and would open no less than about 20 new windows with articles that he wanted to read. 

I never thought about using it for class, but I could have an RSS feed in my class and at the beginning of each class, a different student could be assigned to check the feed and choose a news article that seems pertinent to class (or some variation of that). With my plan to teach US Government/History I think there would be many ways I could use RSS feeds. Also I think that if teachers in a school are blogging, then each teacher needs to have an RSS feed and subscribe to every teacher in the school so they are in the loop about what is being told to parents, what teachers are doing, and what is happening around the school.