Mimi is done! Tomorrow we’re doing a RAP (Restate, Answer, Prove) Response in the form of Noteworthy News.

Also, I upgraded the blogging software to WordPress 2.7 It doesn’t look any different on the front, but the back end is a lot spiffier and should make things run ever so slightly faster! Neat!

Mr. Swanson blogging from lovely Houston, Texas at the National Council for the Social Studies National Conference.

I’ve been going to sessions all day today and yesterday ( as well as tomorrow and Sunday! ) and I’m getting some great ideas for use in the classroom and your scholars!

Thanks for understanding and dealing with a Guest Teacher being at school in my stead for the last three days. I believe it’s going to be worth it when I get back into the school on Monday!

It is all fine and good for me to make a post every day, but what if you had the ability to know about it nearly the instant I posted?

You do!

It’s called an RSS feed. There are many different ways to access the feed, but you need a second program (or a website!) to do so.

If you’re a Mac person like myself, I reccommend just using Safari’s built in RSS reader. You can save the feed by clicking on the blue “RSS” button in the address bar and then bookmarking that. Or, if you are about to dive into the wide world of lots of RSS feeds, you could get something like NewsFire.

For you PC people, I don’t know of any standalone readers that are any good. The PC people I know all use websites.

A good place to start is Google Reader. It is a pretty simple interface and if you have a Gmail account, you’re 3/4 of the way ready to start doing the RSS thing.

Another site that works well is BlogLines. I know a few people who very much enjoy it.

Once you get your reader all set up and ready to start plugging feeds you of course need the address to MY feed.

Well, you see the icon on the far upper right of the page that says RSS and has a little radio looking symbol? That’s the link to the feed! Or, you can just copy this into your new reader.

http://swansonteacher.com/?feed=rss2

Now, you can just sit back and check your reader for new posts rather than obsessively checking the site to see if there’s new posts.

Hopefully this guide has gotten you started in the right direction…and of course if you have a question, feel free to email me or leave a comment!

…and you thought teachers went home and didn’t do anything after school.

I just spent a few hours figuring out how to set up and run some new software for this server. As for now, it’s a semi-secret project. But, once I figure out how to completely use it and implement in the classroom, it’ll get launched.

Okay fine. It’s a wiki. I’m playing with it still. We’ll see what I can do with it.

Hi everyone. Mr. Swanson here.

I wanted to try to use this blog to effectively communicate what’s going on in the Social Studies classroom.  As the year progresses, I hope I will prove an effective tool in communicating what is going on in the classroom even more so than the eBoard. I will maintain the eBoard for those who are only seeking assignments, but I will also be posting those here. I’ll start posting things on Monday the 22nd.

Until then, leave a comment if you like the idea of this site.

Parents: Don’t worry, I won’t be putting up anything personally identifiable for the scholars. I don’t even want to reveal the school’s name or location. Everyone who should be here should already know that information.