RSS in Education

I had heard of RSS feeds before, but I had never thought of implementing it into my classroom. After reading through the assignment it took me quite a while before I decided on exactly how I wanted to use the RSS feed. I knew I wanted the lesson plan to be something I would actually use, hopefully soon. I had some ideas, all of which were for my social studies class. I finally settled on what you see here (Link to my Google Doc Lesson Plan).

I believe teaching current events in schools are really important, especially middle school. Having my students pay attention to what is going on in the world is something I stress in my classroom. However, since I only have one semester with my students, I was losing quite a bit of class time talking about the current events my students would bring in. This year I transitioned from sharing in class to sharing via Google Voice (call-in assignment), but I didn’t like that I was missing the student discussion component. Also, since implementing the call-in current events I haven’t had as many students participate as I had when we shared aloud in class. I didn’t want to drop current events, I think they have value.

I’m excited to try this different take on current events with my students. I think using the RSS feeds, as well as a student directed discussion board, will allow my students to collaborate instead of just telling me what they found.
Here is a screenshot of the Schoology class assignment.

Schoology Current Events

Here is the RSS Feed setup video that is part of the lesson