Sample Lesson Plan #1

Weblogg-ed.com is a website dedicated to educational technology and news, maintained by Will Richardson. This is a sample lesson plan provided by Weblogg-ed.com.  It is an excellent sample of a lesson on the introduction of RSS technology and its uses for high school to college and even someone holding a staff development for an organization.

http://weblogg-ed.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/RSSFAQ4.pdf

Sample Lesson Plan #2

Title:  A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words: Creative writing journal with photo’s and RSS feeds.

The purpose of the lesson is to engage students in writing creatively and provide them with the opportunity to analyze photography, and convey the feelings and emotions evoked.  Students will also provide example of proper grammar and sentence usage, as well as write purposefully for and audience (instructor).  The exercise will also improve the students word-processing typing skills, since this exercise will be done for a period determined by the instructor. 

Audience:  Grade 9 – 12

Objectives:

Student will create a Google Reader account

Student will create a Bloglines account

Student will use Bloglines to create their own RSS enabled blog

Student will use Google Reader to subscribe to the instructor’s Blogline blog

Student will use Google Reader to subscribe to Ichiro Kishimi's photo blog on Flickr

Instructor will use Google Reader to subscribe to the student’s Bloglines blog.

Lesson Description:

Students will create a daily writing web log using Bloglines.  Students will use Google Reader to view photographs from a photo web log and answer the following questions in a paragraph (minimum);

1.  What do you believe the author’s motivation was for taking the photograph?

2.  How does the photograph make you feel and why?

Preparation:

The teacher will instruct the students on the procedures for creating a Google Reader account, and Bloglines accounts following specific formatting to aid in account tracking (i.e. using the student ID number and last name for account names).  Once the account are created, the teacher will instruct the students to visit the teacher’s Bloglines web log and click on the  RSS icon to subscribe to the teachers feed.  The teacher will also instruct the students to visit Mr. Ichiro Kishimi’s (former educator from Japan who posts nature photos and a daily basis.) photo web log and subscribe to it by clicking the  RSS icon at the bottom of the screen.  The teacher must now in turn, subscribe to each of the students’ Bloglines weblogs and subscribe to them as described above.

 Lesson Execution:

The student will login to their Google Reader accounts to receive the updated photograph for the day.  After students have viewed the photograph, they will login to their Bloglines account.  Students will create a new blog entry for the day and answer the questions posed by the instructor using proper grammar and sentence structure. To monitor the progress of the assignment, the teacher will login to their Google Reader account and view the updated content from each student, and grade accordingly. 

**Note…This lesson content can be modified to suit the individual needs of the instructor.  This content is interchangeable within the RSS component’s framework.

It explains RSS in a simple yet effective way and provides several links to resources and ideas for lessons utilizing RSS feeds.