Thing #7A Google Reader Revisited

Checking my Google Reader is pretty much a habit now. It is on my iGoogle homepage so it is convenient and easy to check. I've subscribed to sites for general news, personal interests and lots of science news. I really try to stay up on current science news so I can link what students have to learn to what is going on in the real world and so I can help teachers see why all this stuff is relevant.

Here are a few items from my reader today.

This link made me smile. They tried a fun little experiment to see if they could get people to take the stairs instead of the escalator. It worked! In the short term anyway. It would be interesting to see what happened in a month or so.

This link about how banded rocks reveal clues about conditions on Earth when the rocks were formed, directly supports the TEKS about interpreting sedimentary rock sequences.

I am super excited about something I learned on today's Tech & Learning Blog. It is about how to use SMS messaging for educational purposes. That isn't what I'm excited about though. One of the links I followed from the blog took me to this site. It shows how a group of educators used technology to share with each other what they learned at a conference. I'm so excited because next month is our state science conference and I got some good ideas for ways we can bring back and share info. We mean to meet afterwards but it ends up being very difficult to schedule and by the time we do talk we have forgotten lots of important information. One of the things this group did was create a Google survey that they filled out each day with a reflection about what they learned in a conference session. The spreadsheet that Google creates from the survey can be shared with the group so everyone can learn from each other. I LOVE THIS IDEA!! They also created a Wiki for bringing everything together. I'm trying to decide if that is needed or not.