RSS and Web 2.0

This week in class we learned about RSS feeds, and how to put them on our blog. I thought this part of the lesson was particularly interesting because I had never realized how prevalent these feeds were until we actually began looking for them. Since we learned about them in class, I have been seeing them everywhere! I learned that most informational websites have an RSS feed that you can subscribe to and place on a blog or home page. This updates you on current things that are happening with that website, such as current articles, events, etc. In our society where time is short and life is busy, this technological convenience is perfect! In my future classroom, I could use RSS feeds to quickly access the daily weather to share with my class, or to access current events having to do with our school's website or a unit we were studying. For example, if we were doing a current events unit in social studies, I could have an appropriate news website RSS feed on my home page and save time and energy by quickly accessing articles for my class. There are tons of ways I could use RSS feeds in my future classroom, and I'm sure I will think of tons more with time!
We also learned in class this week about the Web 2.0 tools of delicious and GoodReads. Delicious involves sharing links and bookmarking websites so that they can be quickly accessed and shared with others of my choosing. GoodReads involves sharing good books that I have enjoyed reading or plan to enjoy reading with friends, and reviewing them so that my friends can enjoy the good ones as well. I had actually heard of GoodReads before this semester from one of my best friends who was begging me to join it because we love reading and sharing the books we read with one another, but I didn't take the time to set up an account prior to this class. Now that I have experienced it, I think it is a great technological tool! GoodReads can be useful in my future classroom for my students to share books they have read with one another, and to write reviews online so that I can read them and grade them on these reviews easily, and their classmates can know whether a book is good or not. I think it is a great classroom tool! Delicious would be good for my students to research information and share where they found that information with me, the teacher. They could share where they got information for a certain project so that other students who are struggling could get some help.