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

How to collaborate with ChatGPT in the research process and actually learn something

If you have used chatGPT before, it can sometimes feel like talking with someone who has done too much of their 'research on Facebook', filling in gaps with random facts marginally related to the topic just so they can respond and keep the conversation going. However, if applied or 'prompted' correctly, with the user utterly aware of the limitations and ethical considerations, chatGPT can be a helpful research assistant. There is already a wide range of tools available that are built on chatGPT that can support many of the things described below; however, I am still a bit hesitant to rush in with most of them being 'freemium' or asking you to upload your own research and other details or data into their database, I'm happy to stick with the open version of chatGPT as it is what our students have access to. Image created with AI The following guide highlights some prompts, some follow-up questions and most importantly, what you need to do next to follow up a

Group email parents with Kamar and Gmail

After # EdChatNZ on Thursday night I was really determined to make digital contact with parents and share with them the great work their sons were doing! At our school we use Kamar to collect absences, store student data and report back to parents. It has a handy function where you can click on a student and email the parents directly, but I wanted to email all the parents of classes at once. After a bit of playing around I managed to find a way to do it, here's what I did!!! 1) In Kamar select 'Printing' then select 'Export' This will save the file so you can copy the addresses into gmail, rather than printing it out. 2) Now you need to select your class - as I wanted to email one class at a time I need to select a single class, but you have to option to select multiple groups. Click on 'Option Subject' and then type your teacher code into the box. Your classes should all appear and then when you select the class it will copy into the bo

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!!!

Future Learning Blog

Search This Blog