RSS feeds

Before this class session I did not know what a RSS feed was or what they were used for. After creating an RSS feed, I have learned how beneficial and useful they are. I explored and tried a few different programs available to create a RSS feed. After exploring them, I choose to use the website of Netvibes. I found this site to be very easy to use and navigate. After I created an account I added the four required feeds. Then I thought about what other types of feeds that I would want to add to my page. I find it very interesting and helpful to read other teachers blogs. I thought this would be a great way to keep track of when the teachers update their blogs with new post. I searched for blogs that are written by First Grade teachers. I found 4 blogs by teachers to add to my RSS feed.



After I added the teacher’s blogs to my feeds it was very easy to keep track of new blog post. I could just log on to my RSS feeds and all the blog updates would be in one place. When there was a new post I could just click on the post and it would take me right to that blog post. It told what the post was called and me when the blog was updated. This allowed me to not have to search all over to see the new blog post. Also, when checking my feeds I noticed that some blogs were updated more often then others. Some blogs were updated every few days where as others were updated once and month.




I have really enjoyed following other first grade teachers blogs. Many teachers post awesome ideas that I have adapted to use in my classroom. I have found blogs to be a great place to find math games, literacy activities, and activities to use on different holidays. I love how teachers not only post ideas that they use in their classroom but many times they post worksheets or things that you can print to use in your own classroom. This makes it very convenient because you do not have to spend all the time recreating worksheets or games. Using the RSS feed keeps me consonantly updated on what activities and ideas that the other teachers are posting.

One blog that I follow is called The First Grade Parade the teacher gave a great idea that I am excited to try in my classroom. The lesson that was being taught was contractions. She had the kids participate in “contraction surgery”. The kids had to cut the words apart to make the contraction. After I read this post I immediately thought it was a great idea that would work well with my students to teach the concept of contractions. I then commented on the post to let the author know that I was excited to try it in my classroom and how creative of an idea it was.

After exploring RSS feeds I have thought of a few ways that I can use them in my professional life. The first way is I plan to use the contents of my RSS feeds in my daily teaching. One of the best ways to improve teaching is by learning from other teachers. Blogs are a great way for teachers to share ideas of things that they are doing in their classrooms. I plan to continue to gain teaching ideas, activities, and teaching strategies to use in my classroom by frequently checking my RSS feeds for updates. The other way that I think RSS feeds will be useful is as a resource to parents. I could create a public RSS feed where I can add websites and blogs to keep parents updated about different ways they can support their children at home. This will be a resource that parents can use to find new ways to extend and support learning at home. I think RSS feeds are a very helpful resource for a teacher to use.