Week 4: Thing EIGHT, Thing NINE

At first I was a little reticent to use RSS feeds. Before I fully understood their application, I was skeptical that it would actually be easier than, say, using bookmarks to rapidly navigate from site to site. I watched two different tutorial videos and settled on using Google Reader as my RSS aggregator, simply because I already have an established Google account. I know should at this point be beyond surprise when I discovered yet again, that progressive technology lives up to its name. Not only was I impressed at how accessible and organized Google Reader makes all of my RSS feeds, but I was amazed at how many websites are already tuned in to providing information in RSS format.

As a science teacher, I strive to impress in my students a sense of wonderment, curiosity, and discovery. I tell them that the history of science is vitally important -- it has literally provided us with all the scientific knowledge we currently have. Even more critical though, is the future of science -- because if we were only ever satisfied learning things that have already been discovered, we as a society would never make any progress. As such, while I teach my students about scientific concepts that are pivotal from our past, I also want them to keep up with cutting-edge, contemporary scientific works. The RSS feeds are an ideal way for me to share content-related information with my students in real-time. By maintaining a site that where I can publicly share my RSS news, I can select appropriate, relevant articles for my students to view.

Just a sprinkling of the RSS sites to which I have already subscribed:

• Anchorage Daily News - a good source, I think, for the local goings-ons.
• BBC World News - current events on a more global scale
• The Onion - what good is real news if it cant be complemented by a little bit of humorous fake-news?
• Discover Magazine - cutting-edge news from the scientific community
• NASA News - more contemporary science news
• Science Teacher (blog) - musings of a science teacher; 2008 EduBlog Award nominee

My shared content from Google Reader can be accessed in the sidebar of my blog, but it can also be accessed by clicking here.