Book Reflection: Chapter 5: RSS: The New Killer App for Educators

Okay, let me just say that this chapter was by far the coolest one yet in Richardson's book. Chapter 5 did not earn this because it is only twelve pages long and it only had one picture so that's not it either. No, the reason RSS has earned such a high coolness factor is because of its ability to help you manage both your time and the relevant content on the Internet. This is big for me, and in reading the blog posts of my cohort colleagues I think it's the same for a lot of people.

RSS stands for Really Simple Sindication, although I like Richardson's twist on the definition as well: "Reading Skill: Synthesizing." (Richardson, 2010) Using a form of HTML code (the mechanism behind the workings of all web sites) called XML, sites that employ this allow web tools called aggregators to collect newly added content and display it for you in one place. With this system in place, "the content comes to you instead of you going to get it." (Richardson, 2010) This is very cool stuff.

Because RSS is really that simple, Richardson spends the rest of the chapter talking about techniques for selecting the most important feeds that you will want to follow. To keep your RSS feeds organized, Richardson suggests using several of Google's apps including Reader, News and Groups. If you use Google Reader, note that even within this app. you can use additional tools to organize and manage the content that is "feeding" into your account by way of tags (for searching later) and stars (so that you can read the content, just not right now). And, if you want access to your Google Reader content even when you are disconnected from the Internet, there's Google Gears.

If we as educators are having a hard time trying to pick out what's important and what's not from the Internet, just imagine how it must be for our students. Educating students on what RSS feeds are and how to setup their own aggregators has some real benefits and payoffs.

• Use aggregators with students to as a "personal information filter" so that students are receiving only relevant content and cut down on the bologna that's out there. (Richardson, 2010)
• Use RSS feeds to easily inform parents when students publish new content on their blogs and/or wikis.
• Inform yourself when your students upload content to their blogs, then use the links provided to quickly add your assessment of their work as a comment.
• You can even use RSS and web tools like Pageflakes.com and Netvibes.com to create actual web pages that display specific content that you want students to interact with.

Google Reader Gadget in iGoogle

After reading this chapter, I have to admit that I went hog-wild trying to make the online content I interact with on a daily basis a little more manageable. After setting up Google Reader, I wondered: could I get feeds setup to all the blogs from my Lesley cohort group…OH YES! Now, whenever one of my colleagues posts to their blog, my Google Reader gadget lets me know and provides both a quick link to the entry and a link to the full blog entry.

RSS in Mac Mail

I did some more experimenting and found that other applications have RSS integration components as well. Do you spend a lot of time within your email client? Then you can integrate RSS feeds into most clients like Mac Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird so that new feed posts come in just like email.

RSS in Firefox

Is your web browser your main mechanism for managing content? Then you're in luck! Almost every browser including Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer allow you to create RSS tabs with links to your feed content. New posts should appear at the top of the list and act like bookmarks to the content.

RSS is a great tool because not only is IT simple, but its primary job is to make it simpler for you to find the content online that is of interest to you. More and more information is being created, posted and distributed everyday on the Internet but unfortunately the amount of time we have to ingest thsi information has stayed the same. All we can do is try to be more efficient with our time and RSS is a tool that will help us do just that.


Diigo: Book link list