Bud the Teacher

    Are you a teacher who wants to know more about RSS?  Maybe you’re interested in expanding your knowledge base, or eager to check out the good stuff?  Me, too.  This little manual, put together by Will Richardson, is pretty handy. 

    He, and many others, have done much or the groundwork that will get this stuff in the classroom.  Now all we’ve got to do is to convince people to try it.  I have been given permission to do just that for nine weeks this spring.  In my talks with students about this elective, they have some great ideas — and many of them have more knowledge than I have. 
    This keeps getting more and more exciting.

    It is sometimes hard to find the time to post, given all the responsibilities that I have at school and home.  I am interested in knowing how others find this time.  Heck — I feel guilty posting at work, even though I think this blog is fast becoming a teaching reflection journal for me, and that can only serve to help my teaching. 
    Reading, too, is getting difficult.  There seem to be so many interesting teacher blogs out there — and I know I’m only scratching the surface.  I’d love to know what tools or strategies others of you are using to manage your time so as to be an effective and an informed blogger.  I suspect my students, once I introduce classroom blogs, will be interested in these strategies, too.

    In between fiddling with podcast feeds — I think I’m getting close, but it’s time to get some RSS help — I have been scanning the educational blogs that are out there.  Man, are there plenty!
    I’ve found that Weblogg-ed News has found its way into my aggregator.  And I’m reading the archives.  And my brain is spinning by what’s to be found there.  For example, as I"m thinking about student portfolio publishing at my school, Will writes:

I’ve always thought that the most efficient model for using blogs in
schools would be the one that collects student work from all courses
and then feeds it out by categories to teacher aggregators. That way
students build an online archive and ultimately, perhaps, portfolio of
work throughout their schooling. Teachers simply subscribe to the
relevant content from each student blog and comment back as necessary.

    What an elegant solution.  And another fine reason to incorporate blogs into my classroom.  Right now, I use a discussion board for all of our online discussion.  But what if I used blogs instead?  A two-way, rather static and sometimes artificial conversation could be transformed into a very organic and interesting collection of student work — and it would be a single click to have it all delivered to me — a handy help for taking care of recording progress for the purpose of  silly ol’ grades.
    I’ve still got lots of back-reading to do to better understand the potential of this technology — but I like what I am seeing more and more.