RSS Page Reflection

For the last few weeks, I have been experimenting with the RSS feed, netvibes.  You can see a few screen shots of my new RSS reader at the end of this posting.  I have enjoyed following 2 different International Baccalaureate Blogs.  One of the feeds updates me on official IB postings and the other updates me on users' comments.  I have also been following the Education Week and michigan.gov sites as well.

I took a technological leap forward last week and added my first comments to a blog.  I thanked a principal from a school for an interesting IB video that he posted showing the 5th grade exhibition.  At this point, my response has not generated any additional responses.  I look forward to participating more on the IB blogs in the future.  There are numerous practical postings about how schools are implementing the IB program.

I have checked my RSS reader every few days since creating it.  Some pages, like the Elementary Educator page, are updated every few months.  However, Education Week site is updated several times each day.  For pages that are updated infrequently, the RSS reader seems like a useful tool to make sure that I don't miss any new content.  For pages that are updated very frequently, it seems like an overwhelming amount of content.  For example, Education Week has 18 new posts in the last 23 hours.

I have learned many random things over the last few weeks.  I use the word random, because I have had a hard time following a single topic on certain sites.  From the NPR page, I learned about suspension rates of secondary school students.  In Texas, the rate was as high as 60% of students being suspended at least one time between 6th and 12th grade.  This seems incredible, especially compared to other states in the study.  On the Merlot page, I looked at a lesson titled "Born to Blog."  I thought that was fitting, since this course is my first exposure to blogging.  I learned that I may actually have more interesting things to say than many of the people out there.  From the Tech & Learning site, I found some support for administrators in my district getting Ipads.  The link included about 15 apps that were all designed at making life easier and more efficient.

I have learned a few important things about an RSS reader.  First, it must be managed effectively or it becomes almost as overwhelming as just surfing the whole internet.  I also learned that it is important to subscribe to things that are as specific as possible to your particular interests.  Over time, I can see this being a useful tool for gathering information that I am interested in.