Hard to believe that Week 3, Module 3 has already come to a close! We are just about half way through our EDTECH 501 course and we’ve covered some great material thus far. Speaking of which, this week we learned all about “RSS” and “RSS Readers/ Aggregators.” What does RSS stand for?… “Really Simple Syndication.” Basically, there are sites online that have an RSS option (like the orange symbol shown above), so anyone can subscribe to it and keep updated with the most current content. You might be thinking, well how is that any different than following or subscribing to a site or blog? Well, the greatest difference or rather advantage of an RSS versus email subscription, is when used in conjunction with an RSS reader, like Feedly, all the content that you subscribed to comes straight to you in one news feed reader. It literally saves you time and eliminates the frustration of seeking out each site or just clicking on those individual email updates you get from following your favorite site. Here’s a great YouTube illustration of RSS and RSS readers in Plain English:
Another great feature to RSS versus email subscription is that you stay anonymous to the site your subscribing to, so you won’t have to worry about getting any spam emails.
On a personal level, I really love the “one stop shop” option where I can view all of my favorite blogs and news sites in one place. And on a professional level, it’s an excellent tool for research, not only for myself as an Educator, but for learners as well. I don’t have a lot of experience with other RSS readers, so I can’t honestly compare Feedly to anything else just yet. However, I do like the functionality of it so far. It’s free, very simple to set up and the interface is neat and simple to organize and navigate through. I also like that I can use it on my mobile devices. And I can even sync it with my Evernote account which I use quite often both personally and professionally.
Another interesting tool we learned about this week, that I failed to mention in my Digital Divide/Inequality post, was Google Alerts. It’s another excellent tool for having content brought straight to you and not having to relentlessly search the web for current articles on any given topic. It’s also easy to use, just type in a topic and enter your email address, and voila! You’ll soon receive notification emails on the content you are searching for that is current and whenever it’s published future online. Here’s some instructions if you’re interested in setting it up for yourself: Google Alerts.
In response to what we learned with RSS and Readers like Feedly, our assigned artifact was to create a lesson plan including the use of RSS. I have to admit it took me a while to brainstorm and create this assignment. I wouldn’t way it was difficult, but it has been a while since I wrote a lesson plan! I’ve been away from the classroom, as a former Secondary English Lit. teacher for 5 years now. And initially I was going to draw from my knowledge as a high school English teacher in creating the lesson; but I didn’t think that would make sense with where I want to go in my career as a future Educational Technologist. My desire is to be able to instruct other teachers in their content areas and perhaps be a on site resource for students on integrating technology into teaching and learning. I’d also like to accomplish this in Higher Education, so with that in mind, I composed a lesson plan that would be appropriate for the collegiate level. You can view my lesson plan here: RSS in Education.
If I had more time, I would have met with some of the technology instructors in the Education department at the university where I currently work, to gather more info on actual lessons they have prepared for their Ed students; specifically I was interested in blogging in the classroom or research methods using digital resources like RSS. I’d also like to inquire how professors create lesson plans, which I am sure is quite a different process than creating one for the k-12 classroom.
Hope you enjoyed this post, and I encourage feedback, so feel free to leave me any comments about it!
=) L. B.
Lena Beckford: 