Week 2-RSS Readers and Feeds

What is RSS? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Using RSS, you can easliy be updated with changes to a website without having to check it on a regular basis. Click here to watch a short video by commoncraft.

Internet Explorer has a built in RSS Reader. It also connects to Outlook. You need a reader to receive your feeds and you need to subscribe to feeds in order to receive them. If you use Internet Explorer or Outlook to subscribe to feeds, they will only be accessable from that individual computer. If you want a reader that you can access on any computer, you can use a third party such as Google Reader.

Last year you participated in Learn & Earn 1. During that time you explored Edublogs.org and other teacher's blogs listed in the Best Teacher Edublog 2009. For this post, I'd like you to explore the Edublog Award Winners for 2009 in various catagories. Then, I'd like you to choose one and subscribe to it using Internet Explorer. Once you are on the website, you can subscribe by clicking on the orange button in the top right corner.



You will be prompted to Subscribe to this feed.




Once you click, your feed will be added to your reader. You can acces it by clicking on Favorites, then the Feed tab in Internet Explorer or by going to Outlook where you find your Inbox, Deleted and Sent folders. I enclosed a snip of the tech blogs I follow in case you would like to search for them online.







For this weeks post, please share which blog you subscribed to by providing the link and tell use something new you discovered on their blog that you would like to learn more about or try with your students.

Week 1-Welcome to the Learn and Earn 2 Blog for Elementary Teachers

I assume that since you are here for Learn and Earn 2, you are familiar with the routine. I'll post new content for you each week on Thursdays. At the end of each post there will be a prompt for you to respond to. You'll have until the following Thursday morning to respond to the prompt by posting a comment at the end of that week's entry. NO LATE WORK. (However, I do know that sometimes life gets in the way of even the most interesting of blog posts, so during the week of Thanksgiving and again during the winter break, I'll post an optional prompt. These two posts will not be required required for clock hours UNLESS you have "make up" work to do because you missed responding to a post (or two).)

Another thing that's new this year is the total clock hours you can earn--I shortened the class length to 10 weeks/posts (actually 12 if you count the two optional posts mentioned above) and increased the total number of clock hours of the class. Now the class is worth 5 clock hours. This change honors the fact that many of you will choose to spend more than 15 minutes a week with each "assignment," especially when you consider the time you may (hopefully) spend experimenting with and implementing some of the ideas you learn about.

Well, let's get started shall we? To begin, I'd like us to introduce ourselves. In your comment below, please include

• your first and last name (or just first initial of last name if you want to be less "google-able"),
• where and what you teach,
• what you find most promising, challenging, or exciting about technology today
• and, finally, anything you'd want me, your instructor, to consider in planning future posts (e.g. are there topics or tools you'd like to see featured?)

If you'd like a a little primer about posting comments, you can watch this video:

Posting a Comment to the Learn and Earn Blog from 10Tech on Vimeo.