Feedly and Adobe Spark

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Have you ever wondered how to organize a reading list of your favorite blogs? Feedly is a free tool that subscribes you to your RSS feeds allowing you to read all of your blogs in one place. Feedly creates a seamless main page allowing you to look at what is most important. This valuable tool can assist anyone, especially a busy educator trying to keep up on what is most important in education.

Check out this tutorial from Mike at Boise State University's Ed Tech Program about how to navigate Feedly from YouTube.



These four blogs were discovered and added to my Feedly account. Once added to the Feedly account the main page will look something like this:



By clicking "+ Add Content" button at the bottom you can search for or add new RSS feeds to your account. Here is information on four of the blogs added to my Feedly account:

Stories From School
This blog caught my attention because of the blog title. With educators around our country protesting that educational funds have been significantly cut over the past few years, I thought this would provide a unique perspective from educators around the country. The twelve blog authors are highly qualified, veteran teachers from Washington to Chicago. A teacher eager to be a part of policy change in their community or someone not afraid to lead and learn about controversial topics would enjoy reading this blog. If you decide to check out this blog, be prepared to feel challenged.

KQED Education
I initially found this blog when reading a post called, "How Elementary School Students and their Teachers Tell Stories in the Digital Age." This post caught my attention because my goal is to discover ways to guide and encourage my students tell their stories. The blog is full of innovative ways to incorporate technology in the classroom and engage students in critical discussions. KQED Teach also provides online courses for teachers seeing to develop their media skills. A teacher eager to be a life long learner and engage students in a 21st century classroom would benefit from reading this blog.

Pernille Ripp
This blog was voted in the top 5 teacher blogs of 2017. My favorite feature of her blog is under the "Our Favorite Books" tab. Under this tab she has multiple blog posts about her favorite books. She is also an author of three books about literacy in the classroom. If you need new and innovative ways to teach ELA in the classroom this blog would be helpful. For example, if you are looking for books to spark conversations in the classroom about empathy, she has written a blog post and lists her 10 favorite books to read aloud.

Edutopia
Edutopia was founded by George Lucas in 1991 with the goal of helping teachers "Adopt or adapt best practices and tell stories of innovation and continuous learning in the real world." This blog is full of articles on all sorts of topics from classroom management, brain-based learning, student wellness and mental health. Any educator eager to become the best teacher they could be would enjoy reading any article on this blog.

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Adobe Spark can transform your classroom, allowing students to creatively express themselves through "Creating beautiful graphics, web pages, and videos stories - in minutes." Adobe Spark could be used to demonstrate what students have learned or create videos or graphics to use during a presentation. Below are some features of Adobe Spark:




If you are interested in reading the Adobe Spark Blog, be sure to add it to your Feedly feed. The blog includes many innovative project ideas that could be created using Adobe Spark.

Below is an example of a graphic created using Adobe Spark I will leave you with.


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