Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: RSS (Chapt 5)

Before reading this chapter, I knew nothing about RSS, or what it even stood for.  Now I know that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and all educators should start using it ASAP and teaching their students how to use it.  An RSS will track all of the feeds that you subscribe to  and each hour will check for new feeds.  The new feeds will them be put into your aggregator and you can view them and decide what to do with them at your convenience. 

As I began reading the chapter, I wasn’t sure how I would use an RSS in my classroom. It seemed like a great way for me to keep up on new information and findings, but how could my students use this?
RSS would be a very easy way for me to keep up on my student’s blogs.  My students could create an RSS and choose something they are interested in.  They could then start getting the feeds from their RSS and write a paper using the information they received from the feed that they collected in a few weeks.  Maybe to introduce my students to RSS, as a class we could create one with a single topic in mind and see how the RSS works and what type of information we receive.  I could have each student look over the info we got for the day and determine what was worth keeping and if we should add other news sources. I think an RSS could become a great tool to first use as a group while everyone learns how to use it and then allow the students to create their own with a topic they are interested in. 

A lot of the resources we are learning about you can use through one account, such as Google.  I like that most of these are offered through Google.  As we learn about a new tool, I get nervous about how many different tools there are and each requires a different login.  As I learn that most can be accessed with one login makes me feel more comfortable with using them.