The Benefits of RSS

What is RSS?

As I read about RSS in chapter 5, I thought about a Facebook newsfeed. When I log into Facebook, the first thing I see on the homepage is a list of posts and pictures other people are uploading. I can see all of these things on my main screen without having to go to everyone's individual walls. This is how RSS works. It's cool to think that we don't have to go out looking for information as much anymore. Once you find a page of interest, you can subscribe to it and it appears in your google reader. It's like receiving a magazine right in your mailbox that you subscribe for instead of going to the store to buy it. 

 
So What are the Benefits?

Clearly there are many ways to use RSS for personal and professional reasons. But I wondered, how might a teacher use it with students? One thing I thought was cool was connecting your Google Reader to your student blogs. Instead of going to each individual blog to read and check over what they're posting, all of their posts could come to you, the teacher, via RSS. What a convenient process! Teaching students to use their own RSS is also something to keep in mind. Instead of constantly looking for information (to use for research, etc), subscribing to pages of interest would be a real time-saver. Would have saved me a lot of time had I known about it!

Examples of RSS Feeds

Richardson mentioned some good examples of RSS feeds to get us started. I thought the Weather and Word of the Day were interesting. 

Sources:
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.