Featured: 7-8-2013 Federal Registry for Educational Excellence

Making it easier to find digital teaching and learning resources from the federal government as well as public and private organizations is the purpose of the Federal Registry for Educational Excellence (FREE).

Currently, more than 180,000 learning resources are registered with The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence. Signing up for the FREE RSS feed gets the newest resources delivered to you several times a week.

A new version of FREE, powered by the Learning Registry - an open database for sharing digital learning resources, incorporates a more responsive design for better access from mobile devices.

The new FREE is a work in progress. More and more resources are being correlated to national and state standards and more social features are planned for the site.

FREE is maintained by the Office of Communications and Outreach and the Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education in partnership with the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative.

FREE originated in 1997, in response to a memo from President Bill Clinton. The site was launched a year later. It was redesigned and relaunched for the first time in 2006 and again this year.

The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence is one of the most popular K-12 websites maintained by the US Department of Education because of the many resources being offered by contributing federal agencies.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Subscribe to EDge21 and Always be Up-to-Date [RSS]

The best way to follow EDge21 and always know what new items have posted is to subscribe to the EDge21 RSS feed.

This is the EDge21 feed address that you would add to your favorite RSS feed reader:http://cffmv.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

 

The most popular way to follow RSS feeds is with Google Reader. Here are the steps to manually subscribe to a feed in Reader:

1. Click the Subscribe button in your left-hand sidebar

2. Enter the EDge21 RSS feed URL: http://cffmv.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Once you've subscribed to the feed, you'll see the number of new or unread items in parentheses next to the feed's title. Clicking on the feed's title will display the contents of the feed in your primary window.

 

Catch of the Day - The Canadian Teacher - 2/4/2011

The Canadian Teacher is a website providing free tools, materials, guides, and a forum for Canadian teachers.

The Canadian Teacher content:

• Free stuff - directory of over 900 items
• Teachers' tools - seating plans, classroom forms, calendars and more
• Forum - interact with members on a variety of teaching topics
• Articles - articles that relate to real classroom issues, book and resource reviews
• Classifieds - post and browse ads for free

Teacher Downloads has a wide selection of ebooks and interactive PDF forms for use in your classroom. You will find interactive forms to create passes, calendars, binder spine labels, and more. You can submit and share your own forms, letters, and reproducible materials, too.

Among the items in the Teacher Tools category are assessment generators, seating plan tools, a lesson plan search tool, letter and list generators, and math worksheet creators.

You can subscribe to dozens of RSS feeds from The Canadian Teacher and stay connected and current. Browse the archives to find previously posted material.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Google Reader in Internet Explorer

Learn how to use the Google Reader Subscribe... bookmarklet to add RSS feed subscriptions in Internet Explorer 7/8.
Google Reader Subscriptions in IE7/8

RSS in Plain English

This video from Common Craft explains RSS in plain English ...

What Is this RSS stuff, anyway?

RSS, huh? There are differing opinions as to what the letters R S S stand for. And, it's not really important anyway.

RSS is the easy, efficient way to see the new things on the web that interest you. New information comes to you, you don't need to go out and look for it.

It's kind of like the difference between Netflix and the traditional neighborhood video store. If you want to see Young Frankenstein, you tell Netflix and in a day or two you'll find it in your mail box. Or, you drive to your local video store and hope they have it on the shelf. If not, you wasted your time and gas.

All you need is a feed reader. Some browsers like IE7 and Safari have built-in feed readers. There are also numerous desktop feed readers, many free like FeedReader or Omea Reader. The best feed readers are the Web-based readers like Google Reader and Bloglines. By using one of these, you can read your RSS subscriptions using any computer any place you have an internet connection.

Listen to a podcast What is RSS, Anyway?

A brief, rudimentary, one-page explanation of RSS with links to numerous resources ...

What Is RSS? RSS Explained - www.WhatIsRSS.com

Subscribing to RSS from Internet Explorer 7

In an earlier post, I presented directions for adding RSS subscriptions to Google Reader. It seems those work in most browsers, but not in Internet Explorer 7 (Thank you, Microsoft!). I'm not an IE7 guy, so I had to do some research but I don't seem to be able to find a convenient way to add RSS feeds to Google Reader. As far as I can see, IE7 will only subscribe to feeds using itself as the reader. That's OK, but then your subscriptions will only be readable on the computer you used to subscribe to them.

Anyway, here goes.
1) First navigate to the feed you want to subscribe to, in this case, I'll use my CFF/MV blog.

2) Locate the orange RSS icon in the right side of your command bar and click on the little pointer to the right of it.

3) Choose the RSS option (not Atom). You should now see this.

4) Click on [Subscribe to this feed]

5) The above dialog should appear. Accept or change the Name:, be sure Feeds is chosen for Create in:, the click [Subscribe]. You should then see this ...

Then to read your feeds, click on the [Favorites] star, then the [Feeds] button.

From the list choose the RSS feed you wish to read.

Listen to a podcast of these directions: Subscribing to RSS using IE7

Get a better, faster, safer browsing experience. Download FIREFOX

Web sites offering RSS feeds related to Education and Teaching

A List of Web sites offering RSS feeds related to Education and Teaching to get you started. You can subscribe to any Web site that displays the orange RSS logo in the address bar.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence
http://www.ed.gov/free/free-rss.xml

Today's Document from the National Archives
http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/rss.php

U.S. International Polar Year 2007-2008: Educational Resources
http://www.ipy.gov/rss/education.xml

U.S. Department of Education
http://www.ed.gov/rss/edgov.xml

Get Technology & Learning's RSS Feed
http://www.techlearning.com/rss/index.php

RSS Feeds from PBS
http://www.pbs.org/rss/

Teaching Mathematics
http://teamat.oxfordjournals.org/rss/

Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology
http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/archives/000660.html

Feedage RSS feeds on teaching (supersite)
http://www.feedage.com/feeds.php?cat=264&sb=4

Teaching with Technology@BSU
http://itcboisestate.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/first-things-first-rss-feeds/

Teaching Excellence Network
http://goldenappleten.org/help_faq/

English Teaching and Learning Tips
http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/column/rss.pl?build

e-Learning Online
http://wiredinstructor2.blogspot.com/2007/08/teaching-online-interaction.html

Reading Rockets
http://www.readingrockets.org/newsletters/rss

hackademic.net journalism-learning-teaching
http://hackademic.net/2007/06/28/comment-glitch-fixed-please-retry-and-rss-feed/

These are just a few of the RSS feeds related to teaching that exist out there. There are dozens, hundreds more. How do you find them? Google for something like "teaching science rss feeds" or something like that.

How to Subscribe to the CFF/MV Blog Using Google Reader

(I have discovered that this works for almost every browser except IE7. I'll post directions for IE7 in another post)

1) First go to the CFF/MV blog site.

2) Then look for the RSS icon at the right end of the address bar.

3) Click on this icon to see the following ...

4) Be sure Google is selected from the drop-down box, then click [Subscribe Now].

Then you will be given a choice of whether to add this feed to your Google home page or to Google Reader.

5) Choose [Add to Google Reader].

If all has gone well, you will see the following ...

---

To get to Google Reader to read the RSS feeds you have subscribed to ...

Bookmark the page or add it to your Favorites.

The same procedure can be used to subscribe to any RSS feed. Just look for the little orange RSS icon in the address bar.