Thing 8

          RSS and readers are wonderful. I love having the blogs I want to read right at my fingertips. Not only can I stay on top of what my pastors at church are saying, but I can also keep up with my sarcastic friend's witty retorts about relationships, different librarians blogs about technology, education, and books, AND I can see new recipes and healthy tips . . . all on one page. Totally eliminates the lengthy loading time! I've already found out about a few different things that I'd like to try eventually when I start either teaching or when I'm a librarian! I love that I can stay on top of trends and technology easier, too. In the past, I got bored (I'll blame it on lack of attention-span) when searching through people's blogs and frustrated with having to wait for pages to load - even when it took less than 10 seconds. Talk about being spoiled with an uber-fast connection.
          In the past couple days that I've used my Google Reader account, I've read more blogs and read more news than I've read in months. Students could easily keep up with each others blogs if they had an RSS feed. Classroom blogs could have an RSS feed for parents and students to keep on top of newly posted information and changes. School websites could have them, too. In Google Reader, you can subscribe to bundles which are feeds centered around a specific topic. You can even create your own bundle and share it with friends. I could easily see teachers being able to use this type of combining to receive up-to-date info on whatever topic they were focusing on.