Mom or RSS??

Imagine…someone who buys your food, cooks it, and serves it to you while all you have to do is sit down and digest (sounds like a mother) -- well, this is what you get with RSS only it’s information that’s being gathered and served. Here’s a more complete (aka complex) explanation:
RSS—Rich Site Syndication or Really Simple Syndication—is a tool that enables Internet users to subscribe (by clicking the RSS symbol on the site) to syndicated feeds of information from web sources (blogs, websites, news/weather sites) through the use of an “aggregator” or “feed-reader”. All that’s needed is to sign on with a reader, such as Bloglines or Google Reader, and start adding subscription feeds. This is done by simply copying and pasting the desired site’s URL into your chosen reader. The aggregator/reader will continually search your subscribed sites for new information and automatically update your reader account every time there’s something new posted.
Basically, it saves time and helps manage an overwhelming amount of information on the web by gathering the information for you and giving it to you in one handy location. Teachers and students can simply visit one space, their RSS reader, to receive quick updates on all their favourite websites. For an ongoing list of “educational benefits/classroom applications” for RSS check out the wiki created by teacher Andrew Robitaille in Web2Tutorial.

After looking into RSS this week, I realized that I’ve only hit the very tiny tip of the iceberg with my chosen aggregator, Google Reader. Truthfully, my account has been neglected since my initial set up in the beginning of September. I’d come to rely pretty heavily on my dashboard updates in Blogger, where I’d pasted a few urls to keep abreast of, that I nearly forgot about Google Reader that was just a click away!
My initial reaction was that I’d better get back in there, start adding more subscriptions and beefing up my account. Glad I decided to take Richardson’s advice about getting comfortable “with the basic subscribing and managing functions” and stopping “…at about ten feeds so you don’t get overwhelmed before you get practiced at reading in your aggregator.” (p. 75 of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts…) I’d subscribed to a few blogs already and was overwhelmed with the amount of new posts eagerly awaiting me in Reader. So time to start organizing! I’ve created a folder for the class blogs, starred a few posts and scanned and deleted a few items. I like the option of being able to click “share” on any post and other people who visit my page could see what I’ve read (Richardson p 76). This would work well for sharing posts with students that I’ve read and found to be relevant to whatever subject they’re studying.

A great potential of RSS for classrooms and libraries is in the creation of web pages of information using feeds chosen by students and/or teachers. In reading Will Richardson’s article “Merrily Down the Stream” in School Library Journal , he mentions Pageflakes as one of the online options for creating web pages with RSS. He also blogs about Pageflakes in Weblogg-ed and describes it as "…a dynamic, constantly updated page of content…”. Pageflakes is an online tool that groups together a personalized variety of RSS feeds onto one page. It’s ideal for creating a continually updated webpage of information on any given subject, from a number of sources, that students can access for projects, homework or assignments. I started creating my own Pageflake (see here)--it’s incredibly easy to do, fun to customize and works well as a homepage. Check out Will Richardson’s feeds on Pageflake as well as Joyce Valenza’s. Here’s a Youtube tutorial that was a great help in getting started as I couldn’t find much “help” on the Pageflakes site:




David Parry from the University of Albany writes, in the 2006 article "The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is crucial for a Blogging Classroom" from Blogs for Learning, some excellent thoughts on using RSS in education:
“RSS helps to give students control over content on the web, reducing time spent navigating from site to site to see what has changed, and instead allowing them to receive updates about the content they are interested in tracking or material that is relevant to class.
But more important than staying up to date on information is the ability RSS provides to sort what one wants to read from what is not of interest, not only in terms of selecting to receive only certain feeds, but also as a matter of reading only in detail a few of the feeds you receive: sorting again the information you receive, separating what is not of interest from that which is (an invaluable skill for students who will increasingly rely on digital information).”

I’ve only just begun to really understand RSS, and the implications for teaching and learning, but do plan to continue learning to use it to save time, manage information and easily find up-to-date content for students.
For now, I’m off to enjoy the wild, wet westcoast of Vancouver Island!