Blogging is about connecting with others by reading, commenting on, and responding to other bloggers' posts. The document outlines how to set up Google Reader to subscribe to blogs and RSS feeds to easily keep up with new posts from favorite sites. It instructs students to subscribe to specific Teacher Challenge blogs, choose five additional blogs from the mentors page and Edublog Awards, and add comment feeds to monitor discussion. Setting up Google Reader allows automatic updates from subscribed blogs to read at your convenience.

1. Connecting with Others in your Student Blog! Literacy – 6th grade

2. Important parts of the blogging process include: Reading other people’s blog posts Interacting and commenting on other people’s blog posts to challenge each others thoughts and views Writing posts in response to other bloggers’ posts

3. Making Connections! Simply put — Blogging is about connecting with others!

4. In this activity you will: Be introduced to RSS Learn how to set up Google Reader Set up Google Reader and subscribe to blogs Create and upload your comment avatar Visit other people’s posts that interest you and leave a comment Visit the Discussion Question for activity four to share more about how you use or will use RSS feeds and freed readers Complete the extension activity (if you have time).

5. Step 1: Introduction to RSS RSS is an acronym which stands for Really Simple Syndication. In simple terms, RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the website to check for new updates.

6. How it works is you subscribe to your favorite website using the RSS feed in a RSS feed reader such as Google Reader. Whenever new information is added to the website it is automatically sent to your RSS feed reader where you can read it at your convenience. For example, whenever your favorite blogger publishes a new post it is automatically sent to your Feed reader. Sites with RSS feeds are normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon.

7. RSS in Plain English Sites with RSS feeds are normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon. For more information, watch RSS in Plain English

8. Please note : Blogs on all standard blogging platforms automatically include RSS feeds and don’t necessarily use words or an icon to indicate the presence of the RSS feed. For all Edublogs, the rss feed is found by going to yourblog.edublogs.org/feed. However, RSS feed Readers like Google Reader automatically detect your RSS feed from your blog URL so there is no need to know the feed URL. RSS lets you do lots of cool stuff including adding latest updates from your favorite blog(s) or news website(s) to your own site using RSS widgets like FeedWind’s RSS widget

12. Entering their blog URL

14. Please Note: Make sure it is set to Show: Expanded so you see the full post.

15. 3. The number of unread posts is shown in bold next… All Items. 4. Now just scroll down through the posts in All items to read their posts. 5. As you scroll the posts will automatically be marked as read and the number of unread posts listed next to All Items will decrease.

16. 6. To visit a post to add a comment just click on the post’s title.

17. Step 3: Set up Google Reader and subscribe to blogs Now you have learnt about RSS and Google Reader it is time to set up your own Google Reader account.

18. Once you have set it up we want you to subscribe to the following blogs: We’ve made it easy with the first few by giving you the blog URL you need to add to Google Reader) Teacher Challenge Blog - http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/ The Teacher Challenge Conversation blog – http://conversations.edublogs.org/ The Edublogger – http://theedublogger.com/ Choose five blogs from the The Teacher Challenge mentors page that you would like to subscribe to Choose five blogs from any category of the Edublog Awards 2010

21. ALL DONE! You are free to connect…