I recently had a friend post on Facebook that she loved her new Google Reader. To be honest with you, I assumed she was talking about a Kindle or other computer device for reading books. I am so glad that this class has made me look into what a Google Reader actually is.
Since growing up and having to pay 14 bills a month, I have bookmarked each website that I have a bill for on my homepage of my internet browser. On pay day I go through all of the websites and pay my bills so that I don't forget one.
RSS feeds and readers are going to be another way I one-stop organize for my reading. I love the idea of going to one website to browse all of the articles I'd usually be interested in reading. I actually found that I read MORE because there were more articles in one spot that I was interested in reading. I also listened to a podcast for the first time. I am young and am not against podcasts, I've just never looked for them. What a cool experience!! I know my students would love these things. I can totally set some of my athletic students up to use a reader for sports articles. If I were to start doing SSR as blog, articles or podcasts, a reader would be such a time saver. It would eliminate students from saying that after 15 minutes, they still cannot find something they would like to read.
An article I would have probably never run across without my reader is MacArthur Foundation Honors 23. The article was very vague on what the MacArthur foundation is, so I followed some links in the article to get more background information on this foundation and what it does. They "award unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." The recipients received $100,000 a year for 5 years with no strings attached. The hope of the foundation is that these individuals continue to change the world with no worry for money to back them for 5 years. I think this is an outstanding honor and idea. The original article gave a brief description of the 23 award winners this year. Most of these winners study in arts and sciences. I enjoyed reading this article because these weren't typical jobs. These people do things that students don't know about. Our big push in Mesquite is on FutureQuest, so I think it'd be fantastic to expose this foundation to students to show them that you don't just have to set goals to be an athlete, doctor or lawyer. I find that many of my 6th graders are stuck thinking there are only a few types of jobs out there.
My reader is something I look forward to visiting each day and updating frequently.
And don't freak out if you miss a few days, open it up and there are hundreds of articles waiting on you. Sometimes, I just have to "mark all as read" and start over! :)
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