Thursday, March 18, 2010

Google Reader Question

I've set up my Google Reader to come up with articles related to my Race, Class, & Gender course.  My question is if there's a way to only get articles about the U.S.?  It's too overwhelming to try and do the whole world, so I'm really focusing on our country.  Thanks!  JS

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Task 7

I'm pretty familiar with wikis - or at least certain ways of using them.  I set up one for my class to prepare for their test on Unwind by Neal Shusterman this Monday:  http://piunwind.wikispaces.com/.  Before we started the book, I set it up, and then kids had to each take a section of the book to summarize and pick out important quotes and themes.  Then, as they got closer to the test, they added more quotes, themes, etc.  My only frustration with wikis, so far, has been when multiple kids are trying to work on it at once, and they save over each other's entries.  While you can generally find them in the history, they get all jumbled up.  Also, kids sometimes inadvertently erase other entries.

Looking at the Pi 2.0 wikis, there are definitely other ways to use them that I have not yet.  I liked the ones that Vicki Davis' blog linked to, where kids were preparing their own study guides as the test.  I'm thinking about doing that for the final test of A Separate Peace, when we finish that.  One thing I really want to learn how to do is imbed a quiz on a wiki, like Martha & Brian have done.  I'm also wondering if I could do that off our homepage.  I know Elizabeth has done a similar thing with imbedding surveys into her homepage.  Looking at the setup of the others, I remembered that I haven't been doing anything to much to change the appearance of my various wikis, which can make a difference in kids' interest.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Google Reader Question

So I've got my Google Reader set up with some automatic subscriptions, and I've figured out how to star an item.  However, I just figured out that the starred items get deleted after a day or two.  Is there any way to save an article to read for later (like a few days or weeks later)?  Thanks!  JS