Personally and professionally, I am always on the hunt for information. In the last few years I have noticed that the amount of reading I do online has increased tremendously. RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds and blog aggregators are “tools aimed at helping [me] consume all the information [on the internet] in more efficient and relevant ways.” (Richardson, 2009) These tools allow me to choose the sites from which I want easy and quick access to the most up to date information. Utilizing RSS feeds and blog aggregators lets me “stay informed and save time.” (Gardner, 2008)
Up until just a couple months ago, I would bookmark sites which I wanted to visit again. Now with more and more people writing on the web, bookmarking is no longer an efficient method of accessing information and as Stephen Abram mentioned in his blog, checking bookmarks “is soooo last century!” (Abram, 2006) I now use Google Reader and subscribe to a few sites which are professionally relevant for me. Subscription is as easy as clicking a button – in this case the orange square RSS feed icon or the icon matching my reader. Just like a magazine subscription, the information comes to you instead of you having to do all the hard work of looking up all the sites. Currently, my subscriptions include Science journals and magazines, various newspapers, literary feeds such as the Red Cedar Books site, and my classmates’ blogs. To view these subscriptions, I go only to one site instead of spending time searching and opening all of the sites. The current information is displayed including a date and time when the new information was added to the site. Through my del.icio.us account, I can also subscribe to sites thereby bringing bookmarking into our century. I also subscribe to my classmates’ blogs through Blogger so that when I am on my blog, I am able to see new entries that my classmates have posted on their own blogs. There are other RSS readers available too such as Pageflakes and Bloglines which I plan on learning more about.
RSS feeds are great for me personally and as an educator who wants to keep informed but how will I use it in the classroom?
One of the important skills we teach students in the classroom and in the library is to be purposeful when reading. Students too often get lost when searching for information on the World Wide Web. By setting up their own RSS reader, students can subscribe to sites that are relevant to them (ex. for assignments or projects) and to sites that they find interesting. They receive current information which they can then use.
A few specific projects come to mind when thinking about which assignments and projects would benefit from the use of RSS feeds. These are the study of countries, science fair, space station, and global warming. Our students have learned about different countries through reading books and locating information on the internet. Students could create their own reader account and utilize the RSS feeder to subscribe to sites containing information for their country. As for the science fair, students can locate general science fair sites and then subscribe to various sites that assist them with the science fair project they choose. The NASA website would be one students could subscribe to, as well as newspapers, to learn about what is currently happening with the International Space Station (ISS). Newspapers are a good way to also keep on top of new information pertaining to global warming. Some other options for using RSS feeds in the classroom which came from Traci Gardner’s blog are subscribing to the websites of favourite authors or books, homework blog with RSS feeds, and writer’s logs.
The amount of relevant and current information that I am able to access, as well as my students, is greatly enhanced by the use of RSS feeds and readers.
References:
Abram, Stephen. (2006) “Stephen’s Lighthouse: Bloglines.” http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2006/12/bloglines.html
Gardner, Traci. (2008) “RSS: Bringing What’s New to You.” http://ncteinbox.blogspot.com/2008/06/rss-bringing-whats-new-to-you.html
Richardson, Will. (2009) “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.” California: Corwin Press.
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4 comments:
Hi,
Great ideas about students studying countries or science fair and setting up a feed to get the information.
Hi Sheila,
You have some good ideas for how students might use RSS for school projects and assignments. Although RSS eliminates some of the surfing that goes on when students are doing research online, it does still result in a lot of information to go through--how would you teach these students to think critically about the information they are receiving through their RSS feeds?
Hi Sheila,
I think that you make a good simple point that students should set up RSS feeds for relevant feeds (for assingnments, etc.) but alos ones that are of interest to them - if we can get students to see how useful RSS feds can be by getting them hooked on their own interests, they are much more likely to use it otherwise as well.
Sheila,
As you've shown, setting up an RSS feed for educational purposes is an excellent idea. I think it's particularly useful in classes that students and teachers want to know the latest information like current events in social studies and scientific information for science fairs. I'm going to help our bio-tech students sign up for RSS aggregators next week at school.
Jo-Anne
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