Entries Tagged 'Reading' ↓

I am subscribed to so many more rss feeds that I have time to read and often I will subscribe to a blog that is written by someone with multiple interests because they occasionally write about something I am interested in.  This means that I will see a lot of article titles that are not what I want to read.  I discovered a new tool today that will help me shrink some of that reader “bloat”

It is called Feedsifter and can be found here

You just put in the URL of the site and then type in the keywords you are interested in and Feedsifter creates a second feed that you can subscribe to.  Now you have a feed tailored to your interest!

If you have a google account the easiest thing in the world is to sign in.  Go to igoogle and click add stuff .  Looking down on the left sidebar you will find a choice for entering a url - paste the feed URL that feedsifter created there and you will now have this feed show up directly on your igoogle homepage.

I have often used del.icio.us to create a feed of bookmarks on a specific subject.  Today I created one for googledocs and using Feedsifter I had it make a new feed that would show me only googledoc bookmarks that contain spreadsheet and/or form.  Now I have an area that helps me keep up with new blog posts on Google spreadsheets. This won’t be a perfect solution but it helps me narrow down some of what shows up in my reader now.

This tip came from The Simple Dollar - thanks to them for a great hint!

When I was in high school (yes back when you had stone tablets and rode a dinosaur) I actually liked Shakespeare. We went on field trips several times to Detroit to see plays and one memorable trip to Stratford in Canada to see Macbeth. The play was wonderful - I don’t think you can fully appreciate Shakespeare without seeing a live play.

The trip was also memorable because we stopped to have a picnic lunch on the way home. I have tried to find the place we stopped and I can’t be sure. There was a stream and a very short waterfall because the teachers were all watching us like hawks afraid someone would fall and be injured but we were having such a great time wading in the shallow water above the little waterfall. It was a beautiful place and I would love to go back someday.

All this reminiscing started when I clicked on a link to an interactive website that is all about The Bard. The Weekly Reader Shakespeare website opens with a picture of Shakespeare’s head talking to give you an introduction to the site.

As you can see there are lots of activities a couple of pdf files of plays to read aloud Macbeth and a new version called Mac and Beth. There is also a timeline of his life which includes notable events in history that were happening during that time.

There is also a link to a teaching center where you can download some files to use with your students as they stroll through the website.

If you would like some more resources on William Shakespeare you can try BardNet where you will find a list of links.

Haven’t had much time to post here but I thought this was such a neat idea. It’s called Lookybook and it lets you preview children’s book, add them to your virtual “bookshelf”, and even purchase them. You can write a review and read other reviews and share the book with someone else.

I started out searching for how writing is taught so that in the future I might be a better commenter. I found some wonderful resources and I’m going to share them here before they disappear into bookmark oblivion.

The first is from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory and is called 6+ 1 Trait Writing.

The 6+1 Trait Writing framework is a powerful way to learn and use a common language to refer to characteristics of writing as well as create a common vision of what ‘good’ writing looks like. Teachers and students can use the 6+1 Trait model to pinpoint areas of strength and weakness as they continue to focus on improved writing.

There are lesson plans, assessment, prompts and more. There is more on this at The Writing Fix and at eMints which has a huge list of links that even include classroom posters you can print out.

The next treasure is The Scribe Initiative which is a wiki of the San Antonio School system dedicated to digital storytelling. There is an incredible wealth of resources here including links to open source software for editing audio, tutorials for using MovieMaker and PhotoStory, sources for images and sounds and much more. If you want to take your student’s writing digital this is a great place to start.

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say? ”
E. M. Forster

Go to Google and click the More button. You will see a list - click on Reader. If you do not have a Google or Gmail account you need to sign up for one now.

Click Create an Account Now. There will be some information to fill out including your current email address so they can email your password to you.

Once you have created your account you can log in to Google Reader and start adding things to read.

On the Google Reader page there is a blue button that says “subscribe“. You can drag this button on to your browser bar and when you get to a page you want to subscribe to just click the subscribe button in your browser toolbar. When you see the preview in Google Reader, click subscribe to confirm that you want it.

That’s it - you have a start in Google Reader.

Addendum August 20, 2007

If you are on a computer that others use and can’t drag the button to the toolbar you can just click add subscription on the page in your reader and it will give you a box in which you can type or paste the URL for the blog you wish to subscribe to. Click enter and you should be subscribed.