My RSS Feed: The Old Reader

RSS can enhance both my professional learning and my students’ learning. As a professional, I am a lifelong learner. I can always improve my craft and stay up to date on the latest trends and research. I can use my personal RSS feed on The Old Reader to ask my favorite education blogs to send information my way as it is available. This is a time-saving alternative to going to each blog and checking to see if they are new blog posts. I could create a resource page for my students with an RSS feed. As a math educator, I don’t expect to use this quite as often as other educators might for day-to-day resources. I do not anticipate making a RSS feed for math videos because students usually want to search for one specific type of math problem or practice set as they study for an upcoming test or work through homework problems. However, I could certainly create RSS feed for research-based extension projects. Instead of asking students go to each site I suggest, they can see all the updates in one place. Finally, I could ask my parents to subscribe to my updates with their own RSS feeds to keep them updated on the weekly happenings in the classroom.

I subscribed to several RSS feeds with the creation of my account on the Old Reader. First, I followed Education Week: Mathematics because mathematics education ideas are always useful to me. Education week posts tech tools that add to the math classroom and student projects that bring the curriculum to life. Next, I followed Edutopia. Similarly, they post education tips and tools useful across multiple disciplines. They also make research-based suggestions to challenge our thoughts about teaching. For example, a recent article asks us to wonder if letter grade will/should survive. It’s an important part of my role as a dynamic teacher to keep an open mind and regularly consider new yet valid methods. To keep myself informed about new technology, I followed Free Technology for Teachers. I love free tools because they can be integrated immediately without asking for payment from the district. The blog features apps, websites, AR/VR tech, and other ways I can make better use of the Chromebooks, VR googles, and future devices available to my students. The fact that the tools are free allow me to easily try something new without committing anything other than time to the exploration process. I followed Classroom Ideas-WeAre Teachers because it is recommended as a top classroom RSS feed (Feedspot, 2019). I subscribed to Mindshift because the most recent post captured my attention. Titled “Getting Physical: How the Flagway Game Sparks Learning and Love of Math”, I had to learn more about the game. According to Kara Newhouse, “Flagway is a game that involves factoring numbers and categorizing them based on the Möbius function. Players use their solutions to navigate a color-coded course and place flags on the correct spot. Teams try to solve as many problems as possible in each round to score the most points” (Newhouse, 2019). I am a big fan of adding physical activity to my lessons and the focus on math enticed me even more. Mindshift posts about a plethora of education topics include cultural trends, technology, education research, and education policy. I want to become a well-rounded educator and Mindshift can help me stay up to date on these different education topics.

References

Feedspot. (2019, January 23). Top Classroom RSS Feeds. Retrieved June 12, 2019, from https://blog.feedspot.com/classroom_rss_feeds/

Newhouse, K. (2019, June 11). Getting Physical: How the Flagway Game Sparks Learning and Love of Math. Retrieved June 12, 2019, from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53767/getting-physical-how-the-flagway-game-sparks-learning-and-love-of-math?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: kqed/nHAK (MindShift)&utm_content=FeedBurner