RSS For Education
Wendy Turner
University of Central Missouri
RSS is a format for the syndication of news, and the syndication of various sites that offer news or articles of interest and for blogs and blog based sites. Additionally anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS (Pilgrim, 2002). I understand RSS to be a service/tool that constantly provides updated information to websites. It’s a very useful tool in that you can use a reader to access information, to have the information delivered to you and be constantly and instantly updated. RSS provides a service in that it’s much easier to keep on top of information, with everything in one place via an RSS reader.
I chose to use Feed Demon as my RSS reader. Installation and set up were very easy. I downloaded the setup file, clicked install and it automatically installed. I did have to provide it access to my Google Reader but that was simply entering an email address and a password. Since I had already subscribed to my classmates blogs via the Google Reader, Feed Demon imported the settings and provided access to the blogs. Additionally I subscribed to several websites/services to provide content. I subscribed to sites like Boing Boing, Lifehacker and of course Total Fark. Boing Boing for the various articles of interest to the web reader who is a little more educated and Lifehacker for the technology updates and stories. Total Fark was a fun subscription and really serves no useful news purpose. Based on my experience, I firmly believe that any teacher, administrator or student would have little or no problem setting up an RSS reader. A Gmail account is required to set up the automatic feed import but that is not required. As I mentioned the set up was really simple and straight forward. The only choices to be made in the install were choosing to import from the Google Reader or not.
I’ve found that there are few differences between the Google Reader and the Feed Demon reader. Both update as updates are provided, both provide links to the stories, both provide a total updated stories as well as the individual sections that you’ve created with the various updates indicated. Feed Demon does have one addition feature; it provides an alert when it receives a new feed. This is much like a new email notification, a window pops up in the lower right area of my screen.
Interesting links included a survey on Edutopia that asked “In an effort to ensure that all educators are keeping up with technology, some schools have offered tech training for current teachers. But should it be mandatory?” (Ring, 2011). The poll goes on to state that federal aid and Corporate grants are available, that schools who don’t receive the grants are required to hire outside help which can become costly. On the ACSD Community Blog there was an interesting article entitled “Mrs. Deats Science Lesson Was Made To Stick.” The brief article discusses a class that the author had in which a visual application of scientific principles made a lesson clear. The article then goes on to ask the question, “how do you make kids excited enough about something that they want to think about it later on at home?” A valuable question that we as teachers need to remember and try to act on; how exactly do we make our lessons exciting enough that the kids want to think about it later at home? (Heath, 2011).
Use of RSS in education is simply illustrated by the ease of use of the RSS reader and the ability to add content very easily. For instance, subscribing to blogs is very easy with the RSS reader and so to is updating the blogs. Rather than having to search the web for information it’s presented in a centralized location. This makes it very easy for an educator to keep up with information, be presented with new ideas and items of interest. The educator can then either pass on the information to their class or use the information in preparing a lesson or a lesson plan.
Examples of use of RSS by educators and administrators is used for educational purposes is evidenced by the article cited above. For instance, the article cited on science lessons could be used as a reference or jumping off point to prepare a lesson. The lesson in question doesn’t necessarily have to be a science lesson. It could be a parenting lesson, a social studies lesson or a math lesson. The point is that anything that can be explained with a presentation or a memory aide will or should help the student remember the lesson and become excited about and involved in the subject matter. The use of RSS makes it easier for educators to access the information and thus easier to use the information.
References
Heath, C. (n.d.). In Service. Retrieved 1 25, 2011, from ACSD Community Blog: http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2011/01/chip-heath-mrs-deats-science-lesson-was-made-to-stick.html
Pilgrim, M. (n.d.). Retrieved 1 26, 2011, from O'Rielly XML.com: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html
Ring, S. (n.d.). The Edutopia Poll. Retrieved 1 26, 2011, from Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/poll-technology-training-required-teachers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29
