ECOMP7010: Google Reader & RSS Feeds

Google Tools in the Classroom

Directions: Post an entry with one RSS website that you would recommend and examples of three feeds at that site. 

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FreeTech4Teachers

Source URL: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/freetech4teachers/cGEY

Story Recommendations:

Say Goodbye to iGoogle and Hello to Symbaloo

It is disappointing when a service we get to know and used to using is discontinued by the provider; iGoogle is one such example. Thankfully, Richard Byrne’s blog is an excellent resource for finding alternative resources and services. iGoogle is a popular organizational tool used by both my teachers and students in the 1to1 laptop program, so Richard’s blog post will be a valuable communique to forward to them.

Welcome to Online Textbooks

Guest blogger Cristina Conciatori, a Biology and Chemistry teacher in New York, talks about the the debate between traditional and digital textbooks and how you can make the transition to digital a little bit easier.

21 Must-Read RSS Feeds

Blogger Richard Byrne shares his RSS feed list that he checks on a regular basis and uses as a source for his own blog topics. Richard divides the list into feeds that focus on education topics and those that deal with technology integration.

Book Reflection: Chapter 7: Fun With Flickr

In chapter 7, Will Richardson looks at photos, images and online organizers as powerful tools for student expression and igniters for project ideas. Leading the pack in this corner of web2.0 is the photo sharing site Flickr.com. Flickr allows users to upload digital images, organize them into albums or "photostreams" and set permissions for who to share them with. One of the founding struts of the site is the use of tags (there's that word-of-the-day again, aaaaahhhhh!…oh, flashback to the days of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, my apologies) to organize photos for searching later as well as take advantage of a growing number of web2.0 tools. For example, you can create RSS feeds from Flickr based on specific tags.

For teachers and students, an important place to visit on Flickr is their Creative Commons section. I like how Flickr provides a legend to educate us about the different types of permissions photo authors can give and how they would like their images treated and referenced. This provides an important teaching opportunity to educate students on citing sources from the Internet; citation is just as important for images as it is for text. In fact, some general search engines now have filters under their "advanced search" tool that allow you to find content that has been tagged with Creative Commons permissions.  Google | Yahoo! | Flickr

The potential for teachers to enrich assignments using Flickr are quite numerous and continue to grow. Just a few of the ideas Richardson mentions are: photo field trips, random writes and Make It Mine. And the projects do not have to be complex. Richardson describes a simply activity where students go to Flickr and in the search bar type in the first word that comes to mind. Then, they take the first image listed in the search results and writes a story about it. Check out my Diigo link list for several web2.0 applications highlighted in the book that use Flickr to enhance web content.


My Flickr Photostream
Diigo: Book link list