Feedly--Free Technology for Teachers!

What excellent opportunities teachers have to always improve within their jobs!  I just watched a tutorial about what feedly is, and how to use it.  It's pretty simple, but this guy does a great job walking newbies through the start-up/transition process.  Apparently feedly is being chosen to replace google reader??  I didn't even realize that google had such a thing, I'm already learning!  If you want to watch the youtube tutorial for feedly, you can find it here.

I have just set up my own feedly account.  I had always just sort of come across blogs via pinterest.  Blogs have never been something I have actively sought out on the internet.  I am already, however, seeing the multiplicity of benefits.  

I began by browsing through the different topic groups, adding a few blogs to my feed and categorizing them.  I very quickly came across a blog that addresses education and technology simultaneously.  And its free.  A headline from this blog caught my eye, so I gave it a read.  Here's what I learned:

Last week Open Ed (a free service that offers a huge resource cache of educational videos and games with a variety of browsing options) released a new tool that can be used for creating practice assessments that are Common Core aligned.  What this means is that the tool will allow teachers to put a specific image with a question.  What really impresses me about this idea is not just that you are incorporating more media into your questions as a teacher, but that students are able to SEE suggestions of materials to review if they miss a standard on the assessment.  This post includes embedded videos that demonstrate this assessment tool!

Apparently, tomorrow (July 2nd) at 3:30 pm Eastern time, Open Ed is hosting a free webinar that teaches how to create the assessments.  Folks can register for this event here.

This would be really cool for people in the Biology Department.  I think a lot of us learn visually, so incorporating an image with a question makes soooo much sense!  In English, I haven't had any creative inspiration.  What may have helped my learning is having a graphic of a map that depicts where an author is from or where the work is from.  My spacial geography skills are sort of lacking, so this could be doubly helpful.  An easy application would be to identify on a map where Stratford-upon-Avon was located in England, as this was Shakespeare's place of birth.  Perhaps an image of the cottage would cement the information.  Or incorporating different images of stage types in Elizabethan times with questions about theater organization during Shakespeare's career.

Okay, so maybe I could think of a few.  How neat!  What do you think?  Any good ideas for your content area?