Skip to main content

Collect infinite relevant teaching resources with google reader





Google reader is an amazing way to aggregate information from a variety of sources from anywhere on the web!  I am planning a research project on the New Zealand Winter Games, this is how I will collect the resources.

1) Sign into your google apps account - the black bar at the top has links to google products, go along to more and click on 'reader', this is the link to your google reader account and it is here that you can search and subscribe to rss feeds. (rss stands for rich site summary and is a family of web feed formats used for news and other frequently refreshed sites)

2) Type the topic you are searching for in the subscribe box and press enter.




3) The list of feeds will appear in the main part of the screen, some might not be what you are looking for but if you see one that looks good click on subscribe.  Once you have filtered through the sites to meet your needs you can look at what you have selected by clicking on 'all items' on the left.  A list of articles from all of your feeds will appear, any that look interesting can be read by clicking on the link.  The whole article will appear or a link to the site will take you to the information.

4) Organisation - now this is the key part that will make your busy life easier in the future.  By starring an item it puts it into the starred folder and allows you to find it again easily, this is by far the best and easiest way to keep things for later - you can also un-star things at a later date.  On the left of the page you also have the option of keeping the feeds in folders, this is great as you can choose to read folders separately so you can collect info on different topics.


5) Adding new feeds - at any site where you see the rss feed button (at top of guide) or a link to follow the feed you can click it and it should give you the option to open it in google reader, from there it is a case of following the above instructions to keep the feeds organised.  You can also paste the url, or web address into the 'subscribe' box.  If you have an ipad visit the app store and download a slick rss reader like feedly. Good luck and have fun!




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Learning analytics in secondary schools

What can be learnt from the challenges faced in the use of learning analytics in tertiary institutions, when considering its application in secondary education? photo by Frank Dabek I posed this question after reading several sources regarding the use of learning analytics in education.  As a secondary school teacher I was interested in finding out if there was anything to be learnt about the application of analytics in tertiary setting , before it is embedded into secondary schooling.  The NMC 2013 Horizon Report claims that within 2-3 years it will have developed beyond the 20% penetration point.  After summarising sources I found common themes in the challenges faced when utilising learning analytics. Driving forces behind analytics Error correction and data override Collection of valuable data Ethics, morals and privacy I will evaluate the considerations of each challenge when applied in the secondary context to raise the achievement of learners and inform successfu

Motivation and homework follow up...

Last week I wrote about setting a homework challenge to learn muscles of the body as an online game - the students then had to post screen grabs on google+ to show they had done it and to be in contention for the hallowed prize of 'King of the Muscles' and a cafe voucher. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to go, but by Thursday the buzz in all my senior classes was about ' poke-a-muscle '.  The boys were so excited about it they'd post a score, and then find out that someone had beaten them, and then rush out of the class at interval to get to a computer and beat the top score.  I even had an email on Saturday (two days after the due date) from two boys who had been practicing and spent the afternoon working together to try and beat the original high scores they had submitted with the homework!!!

Gamification of human anatomy

Poke-a-muscle and whack-a-bone are two really fun web apps that refresh understanding of human anatomy.  I'm using them today in my lesson and getting the boys to screen grab their best score and post it to our Google+ community to encourage some healthy competition between the students.  I finished the lesson off with a collaborative problem solving activity that I found on the TES website which asks the students to match up statements about functions of the skeleton !