RSS Lab

This is a reply I made in the blog aha!Chinese blog regarding four must-see places in China for the kids. They have nice pictures and also useful tips.

Updated screen shot of my Google Reader page.

Here is a blog I am following from Aha!Chinese

              I have never used Google reader before, thus I was quite  nervous when I started to use it. At first I found it very confusing and hard to manage, but I always told myself to give it another try. Eventually, after some devoted work on it, I got the hang of it. I felt that it is not as difficult as before. I could add subscriptions easily and enjoyed checking on it every other day. I think it is a really cool tool to receive information easily and timely. I will need to spend a lot more time to accumulate the information from the Internet than I do from an RSS feeder. I feel very happy now that I could use it for my teaching, for my personal interest and also for global news. When I check on the subscriptions, I noticed a significant difference between different ones. Some of them would update daily and have every cutting edge technologies and teaching practices, some of them update like once or twice a week. I think that each of them has good things to learn, and different feeder provides distinct points of view. Now I have learned about what kind of feeds can cater to my teaching needs better and how to make some selections.

       I do have learned a lot about Chinese teaching songs and games. In Laowai Chinese, I have learned new ways of singing a Do Re Mi song in Chinese, and also Happy New Year, Jingle Bells and so on. I also learned some research result on second language acquisition. I was surprised to know that the best time to start a second language is 0-6 months old. I was also informed that a bilingual child would be more likely to be more creative, flexible and open to new ideas.

       As for how I would apply RSS readers in my career, I think that I would get more good quality teaching resource to apply in class: songs, games and activities. I could also get updated on the current big events about Chinese teaching in US. I will definitely apply the things I learn from Google reader to my teaching. I may also teach my older kids how to use Google Reader and recommend them some good RSS feeds that are related to our content and learning. Sounds very exciting!