The more high quality content there is out there on the net, the more time we busy teachers end up spending clicking from one page to another to see if the content has been updated. Anything new at the B.B.C. Learning English site? Anything new on Nik Peachey’s great blog? What about the Webheads technology & teaching group, I wonder if anyone’s replied to my question yet? We can spend ages just clicking around just to see if our favourite content has been updated.
Does this sound familiar to you? Then you should be using an RSS feed reader. It will save you wasting time checking for updated content and allow you to focus on finding good new materials for your students (or simply checking your personal email or the latest sports scores too!) RSS readers work by “pulling in” any new content from all the sites you want to follow and presenting them all together in one place for you to read when you’re ready.
Here is a great video Common Craft made last year about RSS and why we should use it:
I do love the way Common Craft manage to explain things in such a simple way 
There are heaps of good RSS readers out there like Bloglines, Pageflakes, or even you own web browser Like Firefox or modern versions of Internet Explorer. Personally I use iGoogle which includes the Google Reader RSS aggregator, not because it’s any better or worse than the others, I just like how it works.
I have set iGoogle to be my homepage at work and at home. Now as soon as soon as I log on to the internet I can check my mail, check the RSS feeds from Nik, The Webheads and The BBC, as well as checking the latest news and sport headlines all from one quick page. Very handy!
Seth, so true. Everybody should learn how to use RSS and make life easier. This year, during the blogging4educators workshop, we spent a week working on RSS and tagging, for if educators understand their potential, chances are they can go through much more info in less time if they don’t keep clicking from one page to the other. Though I have to confess that I always have tons of pages open and my computer can’t really take all that!
My professional development has completely changed after I understood the concept of RSS. I’ve been spinning the globe many times a day without having to necessarily need to leave my igoogle with Google Reader or Pageflakes.
Hiya Carla,
You’re so right! Now that I use RSS I’m able to be a whole lot more productive (or at least do a whole lot more un-productive stuff
)
I also find RSS has been handy to allow me to keep in touch with ongoing discussions that otherwise I might never have gone back to look at again. I’ve definitely found some really great resources via these discussions. The The Webheads is a typical example of this!
I’m definitely going to be encouraging the schools where I do teacher training to include RSS on the seminars menu for the 2008 / 2009 academic year. It really is time that more of us knew how handy it is!
Seth.
The funny thing, Seth, is that we’ve been spreading the word about RSS in our blogging4educators workshop, but I think only the webhead teachers at my school know about it. Funny or sad…What would be a catchy name for a workshop with teachers that would them want to attend it and understand RSS?
I wonder…
Hi Seth,
Really enjoyed this posting, especially the bit about Nik Peachey’s blog of course! I also love the video. I’m in the process of planning a training session on RSS, so this will be a really handy source of information. Thanks
Nik Peachey
Dear Carla,
Carla, I know what you mean about RSS, it’s one of those tools that you know people would love if they got round to learning how to use it, but at the same time, with limited spaces for ICT training seminars I feel “guilty” in some ways looking at RSS instead of… blogs, podcasts, Moodle etc etc. I shouldn’t do really, I wrote the RSS module for the course and I know that RSS will help folk. It’s just not as exciting as all the other cool Web 2.0 tools.
Maybe we should call the seminars you ” Really Should See this. Or perhaps, You’d be Right Silly to Skip this seminar. Or even: Reduce time Spent Searching?
Any other suggestions?
Seth
Dear Nik,
Thanks for dropping by, and I’m glad you liked the post. Common Craft have an updated version of the RSS movie available now too if you want better sound quality for your seminar. It’s available at the Common Craft Store but as it’s their commercial version you can’t embed it. I did contact Lee from Common Craft a while back though and he said they had no problem with people linking to it for educational purposes, but it doesn’t look as nice to have a simple URL link on a blog page
All the best and look forward to your next posts
Seth.
Seth,
Yes. We should promote RSS workshops with a fun, catchy name. Maybe something like you said RSS this! Really Should See This! It makes our lives easier and, in a certain way, more productive (or not, for I tend to extrapolate what I should focus on and keep on following links suggested on posts, new tools, etc). Still, it’s hard to get busy educators to listen to this…