• What does RSS mean?
o Really Symple Syndication
o A tool “aimed at helping you consume all that information [on the Internet] in more efficient and relevant ways” (p. 71).
o The content comes to you, rather than you going to it. It is a feed.
o You go to one place to read postings and updates from various sites you have chosen through the use of an aggregator, or “feed collector.” The aggregator checks the feeds you subscribe to on a usually hourly basis, sorts the information and files it for your use.
• The benefit: “Not only can you have the news and ideas of the day come to your aggregator, you can also use RSS to let you know when someone out there on the Web has pupblished something with certain keywords that you might be interested in.
• According to Richardson, the use of an RSS “will make you and your students smarter, more effective consumers of information.”
• How do you set up an RSS feed reader?
o First, set up a mailbox/aggregator to collect your RSS feeds. One good suggestion is Google Reader, a free tool.
o Set up a Google account, if you haven’t already.
o Use the “add subscription” link for key words or blogs you want to subscribe to.
o Make sure to consider the credibility of sites to which you subscribe.
o Organize your folders for your subscriptions as you see fit.
o Richardson suggests adding no more than 10 feeds as you begin to use RSS so that you don’t become overwhelmed.
o Once you have completed your subscriptions, simply refer to the feed name at the list at the left hand side of your page. When the name is “bold with a number after it, this means there is new content” (p. 75)
o Click on the name, and content will appear to the right.
o You can unsubscribe at any time to a feed.
o Use the “share” button for your own blog content.
• RSS in the classroom.
o Relevant to today’s digitally literate culture: “Reading literacy can no longer be how well students can decipher text on a page or screen. We have to begin to prepare them for this much more complex world” (p. 77).
o Student Weblogs can be collected through the RSS.
o Paperless classroom.
o Current event news feeds – an example: “Say you have a student who is doing a project or a paper on the avian flu. That student could actually create an RSS feed that would bring any news about the disease to his aggregator as soon as it was published – kind of like doing research 24/7, only the RSS feed does all the work” (p. 79).
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