Journal #7 MS

Bigenho, Chris (March/April 2009). Mining for Gold. Learning and Leading with technology, Retrieved April,05,2009, from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/200904/

This article contained a lot of informative information regarding the usage of RSS. What is RSS? The basic definition is a Real Simple Syndication, an RSS controls information we see based on a subscription to a particular site as well it allows people to pull together rapidly changing information.
There are two parts to RSS which are the FEED and the AGGREGATOR. The RSS Feed uses XML, each feed have defined channel tags which defines and individual items. Aggregators will read these tags, track subscribed pages and notifies when any new items are added. RSS feeds are manly on websites that we use.
RSS Readers or Aggregators are divided into two class’s: Client side and the Internet Hosted. The internet hosted allows you to reach your feed from any computer not just your home computer where you have your network all set up. Some popular internet hosts are Readers, Bloglines, Netvibes, IGoogle, Google Reader. For the client side that are Safari for the Apple computers, and for the PC we have Windows live and Vista.
There are many ways that we can use RSS in the classroom to help educate our students. One way is to have each student create a blog that they know will be used for class work. Once I subscribe instead of looking at all my students blogs I can make it so that when a student posts something on their blog I will be notified. This makes life easier since I would not have to go through hundreds of blogs daily to see whom is keeping up. Another way that RSS would be advantageous is to have student learn about and subscribe to social bookmarking. Once everyone is on the same page with the bookmarking we could make a class tag that students would then have to subscribe too, once done the students would begin to gain the benefits from all resources that I use and other students use with a simple tag. There are many ways to make life easier and more efficient when teaching this is just one small step into a technological world.

Question #1 What would be the downfalls of implementing RSS into ones classrooms?

Answer: I think the only real downfall with this is that if students are not proficient with computers or there is a lack of computers that the initial process could take a few weeks that a teach may not have. So I think patients will pay off in the end.


Question #2 How would RSS benefit students and their goals?


Answer: I think that if students came aboard with the RSS and got into it that they would be able to help each other with things like tagging, Google Docs and so forth. With each step the students would become more competent with computers would be able to find more and relevant information and would be able to share the information with their peers.