My friend, Google Reader

nlMy RSS Reader never fails: I can always count on learning something new. Last night, for about twenty minutes, I scanned through the posts piled up in my reader. I unearthed two jewels. I'd like to think aloud for you the process and share one of those jewels. I was grossly behind with 769 unread items. But, in only twenty minutes I had cleared my unread items. Here's how.

I went straight to Reader rather than reading, as I normally do, from the widget on my iGoogle page. Going down the left sidebar, I read folder by folder, reading one subscription at a time rather than reading them all together. I would click on a subscription then scan the titles of new posts displayed inside my Reader. If a title sparked my interest, I'd click it and scan the article inside my Reader. Then, I'd mark them all read and go on to the next subscription. This skim and scan reading is akin to how I read the newspaper.

Two particular posts I found interesting enough to slow down and actually read closely. I followed several of the hyperlinks to other content that I skimmed and scanned and sometimes read closely.

Jeff Utecht's Socialize your Science Data was an awesome discovery. Jeff details a 5th grade blogging project where students are posting data from a science experiment on a blog and soliciting comments about the data from peers and others around the globe. Jeff says, "We want the commenter to have to interpret what the data is saying and give advice based on the data shown." What a great idea! "This is just our first in what we hope to be many socialized scientific experiments this year," adds Jeff.

Two points interest me about this particular jewel:

1. It's a cool project. I wonder if our elementary teachers might read and comment on the data those kids are posting. And, if we get more classroom sets of laptops at the elementary, I wonder if our elementary teachers might welcome such a project with our students. Heck, this would be a great project for high school science and math teachers.
   
2. I learned a new way to create a portal to a collection of blogs. You can see all the student blogs in this project here and here. These two teachers have used NetVibes, another free Web 2.0 tool, to create one page that displays all their student blogs. I especially like that it displays the latest post on each students' blog, a great way to really create community and get members reading and interacting with each others ideas.

Now, I've shared my learning in this post. This cycle--read, think, write--is what blogging is all about. It makes our own learning transparent. It creates a network of like minds as we're trying to do with our 21Things project. It helps us all learn and grow together. Ultimately, it can help us all learn ways to better engage our students and make the learning real and relevant and rigorous.


Update: I created a Netvibes page to showcase my AP English student blogs. Check it out! I'm still trying to figure out all the features of Netvibes.

Test Post

I'm playing w/Disqus.