Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, September 17, 2007

Subscribing to this blog (and others)

Greetings. I'm writing this morning in Grandma Bonnie's Coffee House in downtown Amery, Wisconsin. That has no relevance to anything comparative. It's just a personal reference.

It's often a safe assumption that students are more technologically proficient than their elders. After all, the stereotype holds that 12-year-olds are best able to answer questions about how to program the DVD recorder, operate the cell phone, or subscribe to a blog.

Like most stereotypes, this one is full of holes. Also like most stereotypes, there's some truth to the generalizations.

John Unruh-Friesen, teaches at Hopkins High School* in Minnetonka, Minnesota and manages one of the most sophisticated course web sites I've seen. In one of the beginning of the year messages to his students, he offered this helpful bit of instruction.

I pass it along in case some of you need technical help and advice as much as I do.

"A newsreader is a computer program that displays all the new content from your favorite websites. Instead of visiting twelve websites, you only have to visit one.

"If you want to use a reader, try Google Reader. You'll need a Google Account (free) to get started.

"When you see this symbol on a website (often it appears in the address bar) it means the website can broadcast its content to Google Reader. Just click the symbol and select Google as your reader.

"So...whether it's keeping up on the latest political cartoons, posts at apgov.org, or the latest rumors from Perez Hilton...it's all going to be in one place, your Google Reader."

You can subscribe to this blog using Google Reader or any number of other newsreaders. You can use the RSS image in the address bar or the link to the right. I've been trying out Google Reader and a couple others. They all seem to work. I think your choice of which one to use should be based on how easy a reader is to use and how nice it looks.

You can also subscribe to receive e-mails whenever something new gets posted here. (There are about 100 people who already subscribe that way.) All you must do is enter your e-mail address in the appropriate space to the right and click on the "Subscribe" button.

As far as I know, your e-mail address will not be shared with anyone or added to any other mailing lists. If you suspect that's not true, let me know.

*In the interest of full disclosure, here's another personal reference: I taught at Hopkins HIgh School for 34 years. But that has nothing to do with my admiration of John's web presence.

If you know of other admirable pedagogical web sites, let me know and I'll publicize them.


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