RSS Reflection and Screenshots

5/15/11

This is the first chance I have had to check my reader since I created the page. There are LOTS of new things. I just added my group’s Diigo account to my RSS reader, so I will know pretty quickly if my group member has added anything. EduTech is posting about MACUL, the certificate program, and 21^st Century Learning. Also, Jodi Spicer posted about an ipod application for people who have trouble speaking. A student in one of my classes uses one. It can say “hello Miss Kimmerly.” I also have added a job postings feed. While I would not be able to teach technology yet, it is very exciting to know that people advertise job openings on RSS feeds, twitter and blog posts. I also just added my local representative to my RSS feed so I can be sure to have the most recent updates on the state budget.

5/20/11

The music teacher jobs feed is very helpful, but does not have an influence in my teaching. There are sites that have not updated at all in the past few days, which disappoints me a little. There is nothing new from Music Machinery; the International Society for Music Education; Music, Education and Technology; or Webblog-ed. MUSTech.net updated, but is simply advertising it’s program with CHASE. NPR seems to update regularly, but it's articles haven't really applied to my classroom yet. On Tech Learning, an article about Common Core caught my eye because I believe our district is moving in that direction. However, I don't believe that there is a music component to Common Core.

There were quick reviews of programs called SHMOOP and HearBuilder, but I couldn't find any immediate classroom uses for them either. It will probably take more investigation. There is legislation happening regarding assessment and rubrics in Kentucky. That scares me a little because most of my family lives there and relocation is a big possibility. An article about QR codes was quite interesting. I read it because I had recently seen these codes on real estate listings in Illinois. If you scanned them with your smartphone, you would get the details of the listing. An article about twitter for educators lists 5 ways it could be helpful. While there were a few interesting things that caught my eye on this day, there wasn't anything that I could really take back to the classroom.

5/21/11

Since I just checked yesterday, there aren’t many new posts. The ones that are new aren’t all that exciting or applicable, either. Getting Things Done has an article about a mom who has used GTD to get her life in order. She is now taking on more and getting even more done.

5/22/11
Again, since I am checking on consecutive days, there is not much to report. There is one job posting and one thing from Techlearning about Monica's Gang visiting Brazil. It mentioned music twice, but for the most part was not helpful. It could be a great tool for a social studies or geography unit, though.

RSS Reflection

The first time I checked my reader, I had many new things to read! I checked again about five days later, and again, there were many things to read! Then, I checked it again the next day, and very few sites had updated. I have added lots of different feeds to my reader, including EduTech Newsletter; Elementary Music Teacher Jobs; GTD Times; International Society for Music Education; ISTE Connects; MENC- The National Association for Music Education; Music Machinery; Music, Education, and Technology; Music, Technology and Education; and Rep Jim Townsend. Most of these are obviously related to education or music or both, but some are not. Even though I feel like I have added many feeds, I don't feel as though it is producing information that I could apply in my teaching.

There was one very helpful thing I learned about through my RSS and it was Google’s new music locker(5/15). It seemed like it would be a great tool for me, but after Blogger went down last week and took all of my updates with it, I wasn't trusting enough to store my music online. However, I recently found myself downloading an album on Amazon, and they offered to load my purchase straight onto my cloud account. The benefit suddenly struck me. As a teacher at four different buildings, this tool would allow me access to all necessary music files for my job. All I need is internet access. I probably would not have started my music locker account if I had not read the music cloud article last week. I am quite excited to try out the google locker which allows up to 20,000 songs for free, as opposed to Amazon's 5GB.

I think my RSS is geared toward my own needs pretty well, but could be more effective if I add more subscriptions. While there are many sites that update often, they don't necessarily apply to my field. The ones that do apply to music education don't update very often, but when they do, they often suggest very interesting programs or advertise great PD opportunities. If I add more feeds, maybe I will find more entries that are applicable to my classroom needs.

Here are my two screen shots.

 The shot above is of my Google Reader page.

This shot is of the comment I made to http://musicmachinery.com/. It is a blog that talks about current music software available on the internet.