RSS in Education

Web 2.0 technologies are helpful to educators in multiple ways. RSS is beneficial to teachers not only because it saves time but it also allows you to be in control of the news you read. Personalized information from newsfeeds, blogs, wikis and Podcats are being sent right to your desktop using RSS feeds. In this blog, you will find numerous ways RSS can be used in the classroom.

http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/Web2TL/rssfeeds.html What is an RSS feed? RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication. Getting started with RSS feeds will only take a few minutes. Educators should have their students using RSS feeds from the beginning of the school year to see the full benefits. Getting started is easy and you only need an email address to get the benefits of RSS feeds. First, students should sign up for a reader like (http://www.google.com/reader ). Then you are able to go to websites and click on the RSS icon to begin receiving updates.

http://technological-teaching-aids.suite101.com/article.cfm/educational_uses_for_rss_feeds Teachers are not the only one benefiting from RSS feeds. Administrators in the school setting are catching on to the benefits of RSS feeds. For instance what if one administrator was in charge of 15 schools. Instead of checking all 15 websites, he or she can subscribe to the feed and read all of the updates on one page.

http://www.feedforall.com/academia-and-rss.htm suggests students should monitor for scholarship opportunities using RSS feeds. Parents of students who are getting ready for college can find feeds and Podcasts about final aid at http://www.educational-feeds.com. Parents can also listen to feeds about school news or any other changes going on concerning the school.

http://www.articlebiz.com/article/258154-1-rss-the-future-of-e-learning/ discusses the question, are RSS feeds going to be the future of e-learning? Downes says in his article "An Introduction to RSS for Educational Designers" that "the distribution of content over the Internet will look a lot more like an RSS network than... an enterprise content management system." The reason why is because using RSS feeds costs less money than a content management system and they can find much more content.

http://www.teachinghacks.com/index.php?s=RSS+ideas+for+educators. Instead of using paper journals, teacher can have students blog about their experiences. As a teacher, you can subscribe to their blogs and then their blogs are sent directly to your computer. This eliminates keeping 30 journals in a classroom. When student blog, the comment feature easily allows other student to comment on their classmates blogs.

http://www.slideshare.net/leonardstern/rss-in-education lists ways to use RSS in the classroom. Teachers can create bookmarks of content related websites using De.lic.io.us.com and then syndicate them. Students can also take pictures of class projects and use Flickr.com to syndicate photos. It is also possible to take a textual feed and using talker.com or feed2podcast.com can let a student listen. This is great for students who prefer to hear the notes rather than reading. Teachers can also show students how to combine their feeds by using feedshake.com or rrsmix.com. Students can have their to do lists sent through a feed by using Rememberthemilk.com or Tadalist.com.