enable you to control how many updates you receive from Web sites you
follow and to access a wide range of information easily.
My feed reader is a super-efficient information filter for everything digital in
my life. I use Pageflakes ( www.page
flakes.com)—a free Web-based feed
reader with an appealing layout—to follow different types of information, including current events in countries my
6th grade social studies class is studying
( www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/167149
25) and my students’ digital projects
( www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/166177
06). Updates to each of the sites I monitor appear as links in individually titled
boxes called “flakes,” allowing me to
quickly scan new content from different
Web sites in one location. Other popular readers include Bloglines (www
. bloglines.com) and Google Reader
( www.google.com/reader).
Getting started with Pageflakes is as
simple as creating a free account and
then selecting a collection of frequently
updated Web sites you’d like to keep
track of. Maybe you’d like to read bloggers like Scott McLeod (www.dangerously
irrelevant.org) or Chris Lehmann
( www.practicaltheory.org/serendipity)
who write about school leadership. Instructional experts like Will Richardson
( http://weblogg-ed.com) might provide
new ideas for your teachers.
Once you’ve identified sites you’d like
to follow, add their “feeds” to your information aggregator. To do this in Pageflakes, click on the yellow snowflake
icon on the main page, select the “Add
RSS Feed” button on the bottom left
corner of the menu that appears, then
paste in the URL of the site that you’re
hoping to follow. If the Web site provides an RSS feed—and most do—
Pageflakes will automatically add a new box
to your main page that includes links to
the five most recent articles posted on
that site. And it will check that site several times a day, retrieving links to any
new content posted. Browsing the Web
for new ideas goes from a time-consum-
Browsing the Web for new ideas
becomes a “one-stop” experience.
ing grind requiring stops at dozens of
pages that may or may not have new
material to a “one-stop” experience: Just
log in to your aggregator and quickly
see new content from all your favorite
sites at once.
Once you’ve set up RSS feeds, visit
your aggregator at least once a day. Find
interesting ideas to share with your
teachers or administrative team. You
might create collections of feeds that
would interest teachers, parents, and
students. Challenge each of your professional learning teams to organize a set of
shared feeds about relevant topics and
to discuss what they read through those
feeds at weekly meetings.
As you use tools like RSS to access
cutting-edge instructional ideas, you’ll
understand how new technologies
change the way students and teachers
interact with information and other
learners. You’ll be able to point out how
teachers can integrate the new literacies
you’re mastering into teaching. And
you’ll become a model of courage for
colleagues hesitant to change the way
they learn. EL
Bill Ferriter teaches 6th grade language
arts and social studies in Raleigh, North
Carolina, and blogs about the teaching
life at The Tempered Radical
( http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the
_tempered_radical). He is the coauthor
of Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year
(Solution Tree, 2009); 919-363-1870;
wferriter@hotmail.com.
