Week 3 Reflections

1. What did I learn from this week? I've learned that blogs can be a powerful collaboration tool between fellow teachers AND between my students. "RSS reader" is now in my vocabulary and I'll probably set my "pageflakes" page as my homepage so I can keep up-to-date with blogs, news and webpages that interest me.

2. How will I use what I've learned? I plan to keep using Pageflakes during the school year as a way to collaborate with students and stay up to date with theatre ideas posted by fellow theatre teachers. I definitely want to keep adding to my Pageflakes and take advantage its features.

3. How do I feel about this tool? I'm sad I didn't find out about RSS readers earler! I love the idea of updates coming to me instead taking the time to look at every single webpage or blog to see if it's been updated. It saves time, which is a precious commodity during the school year.

4. What do you not want to forget about this tool? I want to remember that features are constantly being updated! I don't want to forget to set my Pageflakes page as a bookmark or homepage on my computer in my classroom when I can access it. I want to keep using it and referring to it throughout the school year.

5. How can this be used in the classroom? I can use RSS to stay up-to-date with other theatre teachers to collaborate curriculum ideas, or perhaps collaborate with other core curriculum teachers on a project that incorporates what my students are learning in other classrooms.

6. Should I use this in the classroom? Yes! I think it can help students see one way to keep uptodate on news happening outside of the classroom. For example, I can stay up-to-date on Broadway plays and musicals and inform students how daily news stories relate to our current curriculum.

7. What questions do I have about this tool? What else do I not know? Since RSS is something I never knew existed, it makes me wonder what else out there could be helpful as a teacher. Is there more potential for Pageflakes? Are there plans to expand it and make it better?

RSS Choices

This week I feel so much more in tune with the modern Internet era by learning about RSS. I didn't know there was an easy way to keep up with lots of different blogs and updates through one RSS reader. After looking at the descriptions of the different RSS readers, I decided on PageFlakes as my RSS reader because I'm very much a visual learner, so I thought it be easier for me to visually process the information. It did take some getting used to the fancy layout though. But after playing with it for a while, I feel like I understand it.

The non-classmate blogs I subscribed to were:

1. Fox News and CNN (My sources of world news)
2. www.thedramateacher.com (I liked the theatre teaching ideas posted here)
3. adventuresofadramateacher.wordpress.com (I like how the teacher uses the blog to post info about her classes and a way to connect to both current and past students)