My District? RSS?

Unbelievable!! I was searching through my school based e-mail last night. I usually get a few useless e-mails everyday, so I just go through and delete them. Last night I was noticing an e-mail that was titled "CCPS Press Releases". I never heard them use this language before in an e-mail. I opened the e-mail and to my surprise it was a group of articles that are in the form of a blog. I scrolled down through the list of article and I saw the familiar RSS/XML button. I thought I was seeing things. I couldn't believe my eyes. Someone is beginning to get with he program. I immediately subscribed to the press releases. Now, when I open up the education section of my feeds, I get my districts press releases automatically.

My goal is to now discuss with someone the importance of making the site a little more interactive. I think it is only fair to have a comment section to the articles. I know this will open up a can of worms that the district probably doesn't want to hear, but they need to hear it!

I am going to stay on top of this. I don't want this to end here. I would like to see more effort put into creating on-line tools that are teacher, student, and parent friendly. What about a school based curriculum wiki. What about creating a weekly podcast per grade level that is linked to this site for student and parent use. The possibilities are endless.

Starting Again

It is like I am starting over as a new teacher this year. On Monday the 2oth, I am back in the classroom. This time I am the Science Resource Teacher at a Title I School. This will be a new set of interesting and tall hurdles to jump over. I now will have the privilege to teach all the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes in the school. I will be responsible for many live animals, yearly Science Projects, the 5th grade end of the year over-night trips, and many other interesting events this year. Finding time to integrate my classroom 2.0 initiatives will be the real challenge. I will only be meeting with the students twice a week. This doesn't allow me nearly enough time to integrate RSS Aggregators, wiki's and blogs into the curriculum. I will have to play this one by ear to see how much we can accomplish. I will start off using my own blog as a communication between school and home. We will see how this takes off. I will continue to use Classblogmeister.com as by blog of choice for student use. This format lends itself nicely to teachers because of the edit features. Thanks to David Warlick and his Landmark Project, we have this avenue to drive down.

Home Sweet Home

Yesterday, I drove 7 hours from North Pennsylvania to Southern Maryland. When I got home, I helped some friends move. Needless to say, I was tired when my head hit the pillow last night. The trip was very much needed.
Now, my focus can return to education. Summer is almost over. I have a few interviews on Monday. One interview for an elementary Science teacher position, and another interview for a 3rd grade position. I am leaning towards the Science position. I already have a few great ideas for the students. A weekly podcast for each grade level, and I am currently thinking of ways in which we can research, and stay up-to-date using an aggregator such as google reader or pageflakes. Any way, I have to get the job first.

Twitter: What are you doing?

Will Richardson http://weblogg-ed.com/ , just informed me of a great link. http://twitter.com/ is a site that asks everyone: What are you doing right now? It is a great feed to add to your RSS reader. I can see this working beautifully if you have a group of friends that are at a great distance away from each other. Its kind of like im/blog/text messaging all tied into one great package. The cool part about it is that you can add a feed to your RSS reader. I have to start to get my friends on board now!