My Spidey Sense

Wow this was a fun and challenging assignment.  I actually tried all three readers and found that Pageflakes was my favorite because I found it to be the easiest to navigate and use. 

If I ever figure out why my computer at home will not load pageflakes, I will use it at home to get caught up on educational research and headline news.

I really loved this tool because I would never search the net everyday if I had to type in everything I put on my pages for this site. 

I am not sure about “what I do not want to forget” about this tool.  Oh, because of the wallpaper I chose, the “add a page” does not show up very well. So I need to remember that it is just next to the last page tab at the top:)

I post a “quote of the week” in my classroom.  There was a feed for “quote of the day” that I might find something cool for my kids and I don’t have to search for it on the web.  I probably won’t use all of them, but there will be some that will be appropriate for my classes.

I will also have the latest headline news available so I will be better prepared to address student’s concerns about events that affect them. 

I think this would be very valuable for me and for my students and is totally appropriate for use in my classroom and as an educational tool. 

I think the best thing I learned is that there are all kinds of resources out there that I had no idea existed before this class.  I will really value the knowledge I have obtained as I have completed these assignments and I look forward to more classes that will help me to be a better educator and communicator. 

I originally chose Pageflakes for my RSS reader.  I liked the format and how easy it was to create all kinds of feeds that interested me. I tried to catagorize my interests and create more than one page as well.  Unfortunately, when I tried to access Pageflakes from home, I could not get my browswer to open up the site.  So I switched to Netvibes and ran into a few problems.  After I created my own reader, I had to get out and work on something else.  When I tried to log in later, the log in screen would not work.  So I tried using Google Reader since I have a gmail account.  I found this reader to be very limited compared to Pageflakes.  I also had a few problems finding what I wanted to add to my reader as well as some other technical difficulties.  So I actually tried all three, but my favorite and the one I created for school is on Pageflakes.

I subscribed to the following non-classmate blogs:

http://neohouston.wordpress.com because my son created this blog.  He is an urban planner and designer in Houston and I wanted to keep up with what is interesting to him.

http://www.roundrockisd.org/RSS/News.xml because I wanted to keep up on the latest news from RRISD.

http://barbarafeldman.com because she had some interesting things about technology and math.

Overall I found this to be challenging and very enlightening about what is out there on the web.  I realize there are more resources than I have time to search out, but it amazing to see how technology is changing our world.

One of the blogs I liked was:

http://www.robinstechtips.com/

I think it is a valuable resource for some quick tips to technology questions.

The second blog I enjoyed was:

http://naesp.typepad.com/ (principal’s office)

Although I never want to be “called in” to the principal’s office, this blog led me to some other reading that was most interesting.  It is designed to help weed through books, articles, and the latest research in teaching and give some of the best “food for thought” I found in the administrative blogs.

I. I have learned that for me this is very time consuming. I am still struggling with getting bogged down in all the reading.  I want to check out so many sites and blogs so I don’t miss something, but I think I have figured out that if there isn’t something at the beginning to catch my attention, I might need to move on:)

2.  I will keep reading and learning from others so that I can use blogs or other technology more effectively in my classroom.

3. I was, and I still am, excited about what this could turn out to be – it is definitely still a work in progress.

4. I don’t want to forget my password or web address:)

5. I know I have said this many times, but I think to have a class blog may help me get to know my students better and give them a forum to ask questions when they won’t even speak in class.

6.  I am not sure I will be able to effectively incorporate this during the current school year, but I am going to try:)

7.  Where to start – so many questions, so little time!

I am looking forward to learning more about blogs and how they can help me in my classroom this year.  I think my students would be able to use a blog entry to ask questions that they might not want to ask in class.  I am hoping that this will also be a great collaboration tool for me as well as other teachers so we can share ideas on what works and what doesn’t.