Journal 7 - NETS I & III

"Mining for Gold" - Chris Bigenho

Bigenho, Chris (March 2009). Mining for Gold. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37, Retrieved March 9, 2009, from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/200904/

This article is about RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and how educators can use this new technology in the classroom. RSS is a new technology that enables information on the web to come to you instead of you going to different websites to see if there is an update of information on the website. The way that RSS works is through two tools called feeds and aggregators. Feeds contain channel tags and have specific information for each individual item on a website. Aggregators read these feeds, track updated information, and allows you to see any available updated information. Aggregators are basically a webpage where all these websites that you like to use can be displayed in. There are two types of aggregators. One is internet hosted, which are basically readers on the web such as Bloglines, iGoogle, and Net Vibe. The other is client-based which are incorported into browsers and operating systems such as Safari for Macs and Vista for PCs. With internet hosted aggregators, you can access your feeds from any computer. Client-based aggregators limits you to your personal computer only.

Bigenho suggests several ways for educators to use RSS in the classroom. One way would be to subscribe to student blogs. RSS makes it extremely easy to track new postings on individual student's blogs. Instead of having to go to each student's blog to check if they had posted anything new, RSS brings all the blogs to you on one website such as Blogline or iGoogle. Blogline is especially made to subscribe to a number of blogs and there is a notifier which notifies you whenever a new posting on any of the blogs have been updated. This is a great way to bring technology into the classroom without being overwhelmed with keeping tract of everyone's blogs. Another way to use RSS in your classroom would be to subscribe to social bookmarks. One social bookmarking website is Delicious.com. Delicious allows you to "bookmark" your favorite websites under more than just one tag or topic name. You can even create a tag name specifically for your class. You can then subscribe to the tag and feed it to an aggregator that will allow all the students to view the resources that you are collecting for them. I think that RSS is a great tool to know how to use. It can make following information so easy because everything is being brought to you.

Question 1: What are the two different types of aggregators?

One type of aggregator is internet hosted. These are web-based readers such as Bloglines, iGoogle, and Net Vibe. These are hosts that can be accessed from any computer that is connected to the internet. The other type of aggregator is client-based. These are aggregators incorported into browers and operating systems. For example, Safari is an aggregator for Macs and Vista and Windows Live are aggregators for PCs.

Question 2: How can educators incoporate the use of RSS into their classroom?

Blogs are a great technology to have students create. Blogs are a great tool to get students to be creative and to communicate their thoughts in a different way. There are usually around 20 to 25 students in a classroom. To try to keep up with all the student's blogs can be overwhelming and difficult. RSS can turn keeping up with student's blogs from stressful to extremely easy. You can create a feed from each student's blogs into one aggregator such as Blogline. Everytime a student creates a new post, you are notified of this. RSS can save you a lot of time because you do not have to check on each student's blog to see if they have a new posting or not, the updates come to you.