Alice Mercer

Live report from the Computer Using Educators Conference in Palm Springs, CA.

Our guest, Jennifer Dorman, gave lots of great information about using RSS in education.

1. We defined RSS feeds (sorta like a magazine subscription, but online);
2. We discussed why you would want to use it as a teacher, and in your classroom;
3. We shared examples of how we use it (sometimes for ourselves and our professional development, sometimes to automate information given to and from students); and
4. We talked about opportunities and challenges.

You can find our planning wiki here.

Some featured bookmarks from the show are here:

• From Jennifer Dorman:
  RSS for Educators wiki page
  RSS Presentation file
• RSS in Plain English (from Lee LeFever at CommonCraft, examples it really simply)

A more extensive list of bookmark is here on Diigo.

One issue that came up was the lack of RSS on content pages geared towards students. We've used feeds from Highlights, and Discovery Science. If you have other elementary-age content that has an RSS feed, please share it on in our Diigo group, or here as a comment. Thanks!

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This week we discuss the subject of homelessness, and I play a clip from an interview that I during a social services fair in Victoria, BC as part of Homelessness Action Week.We also talked about the self-advocacy work being done by and for homeless individuals at Homeless Nation

I was joined by Dave Cormier, Alice Mercer, Jeff Flynn and Arthus -- thanks to them and all who joined us in the text chat.

Come and listen as we talk about our projects. This is our Back to School Special. The It's Elementary Team; Lisa Durff, Maria Knee, Alice Mercer and Jose Rodriguez. As the Webcastathon begins to wind down the Chat Room was buzzing. We had some of our regulars and special visitors from New Zealand. Hope you enjoy the show!

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