RSS Nightmare

I'll admit that I am new to this RSS deal.  I have little idea what I'm doing and what few buttons I have managed to push have left me with more confusion rather than less.  I looked up some information online and discovered that RSS is supposed to syncronize one's internet updates into a readable formate.  I like the idea.  Everyday I visit about 10 sites on a regular basis: 2 news channels, facebook, my online email, my uaa email, blackboard, my blogger, the weather channel, and the library.  I would LOVE to have all of the information on one site!  But, when I went to try and set up Google reader, I ended up with not the news stories I wanted, but rather tons of useless articles that I would never have the time to read.  I just overloaded my reader with just one site!  EEk!  Help!  

Passed my smarts on

So, yesterday I sat down with my in laws and had them log into the National Geographic site to explore it (my brother and sister in laws are age range 22-7 years) and all were quite enthralled with the games and interactive tools. All of them are home schooled and loved the cool computer tools. Fortunately, they all were unable to trump me in the geography game. I remained in control of my pride as a result :).

So much for being smart

So, I thought I was smart.  Then I went to the National Geographic website and started playing the little kid games and failed so completely that I'm seriously doubting my abilities to teach now!  ha ha ha

No, it was a great website that has tons of wonderful games for kids and interactive learning tools.  I could be entertained for hours, so I'm assuming any student able to read and comprehend large concepts would also be entertained.  I also learned something from the videos and games I played, so I don't doubt that this site could teach students something quite quickly and completely.

On the other hand, a word of warning for this site; it did contain a large bit of graphic material so younger students might not be encouraged to wander around the site without supervision.  The graphic material when taken as a purely scientific view, is quite fascinating and wonderful to learn, but younger students might not be able to make the distinction.  I would recommend that teachers carefully look at what they would like the students to do at this site before they assign a project.