RSS

Wow!  The last three weeks have been filled with so much great information.  Let me share with you what I am also reading.  Below is a screen dump of my RSS Reader page.  You can also follow it anytime on my blog in the top right hand corner. 

 

Currently, I am following a blog written by a principal.  One of his posts was about burnt out teachers.  He discussed how some teachers are burnt out yet they still keep coming back and they are protected by tenure.  I commented that all teachers who are "burnt out" aren't still passionate about teaching.  Thinking about my own experience, I was a bit "burnt out" for a while.  However, I made a change to a new school and I am loving the change and my faith in teaching is renewed.  My feeling is that when teachers are becoming burnt out, they need change.  If change doesn't help, then I think it is time for them to go.  Of the 11 comments posted, he replied back that he agreed with me.   I'm so excited to be acknowledged and experience the dialogue (although extremely short). 

NPR was extremely overwhelming for me.  Given the amount of information that was broadcast over the three days, I couldn't keep track of it.  Since I wasn't able to keep track of it, the subscription does not seem effective.  Most days, I was so absorbed by NPR, that I often overlooked the one or two postings by other Reader Feeds.  I can just look in the area where all unread articles are, I have to go through each subscription and see which ones actually posted something.  On the other hand, I subscribed to The Educated Reporter and found that it posts about twice a day with things that I am interested in.  I believe that I would continue to follow this beyond the class.

Through my news feeds, I have learned a little about a lot.  Sometimes, I have found that one article leads me to another article and I can spend more time than I initially committed.  I have enjoyed the articles on the Educated Reporter, and it often makes me think about education from special education to the movie Waiting for Superman.  Additionally, I just read some stuff from NCTM that will be useful for me in the classroom.  I wish that it updated the feed more often.  As I have gone back through older feeds I have found interesting things.  Given the constant criticism about math and where it is going in the US, I would have thought there would me more instructional advice/ideas on there.  Some of the information on there is about promoting their conference or promoting the selling of products rather than instruction; however, maybe I am just subscribing to the wrong feed. 

I am still searching for good things from my subscriptions to use in the classroom.  NCTM, didn't quite have what I was looking for.  I am following a math blog, but most of the things I have seen are far beyong my middle school students.  There are many great things on math forum, but it has turned off the track changes in Reader and many times I am searching all over the place for things that fit my students.  Sometimes I wonder if they are really trying to "help" or "sell" their product.  It is a little discouraging that the top names in math education aren't open to sharing.  Now, everything wants you to log in and share your personal information.  Currently, I am still in search for a great website that has a reader that I can subscribe to and use in the classroom.