This week we were looking at RSS feeds. I love RSS feeds. I barely have time to check my own e-mail somedays, there is no way that I would be able to keep up with the blogs that I like to follow. RSS feeds allow the new posts to be sent to me, all in one location. It makes it a lot easier to check the posts once every few days and know that I haven't missed anything. It also makes it easier to quickly glance through and decide what I would like to read, and what I can save for later. I have gotten a lot of really valuable information this way. The blogs that I follow have varied, I've dropped a few - only to pick them up again later - and added a couple of others, but it really makes the whole process a lot easier to keep up with (I love one stop shopping). I have tried getting my staff to use these without a lot of success. The ones who like the feature were already using RSS feeds when I started last year. Those who weren't using them yet, really haven't seen the use yet. I did manage to convert a couple of teachers last year, and I hope to grab a few more this year. Maybe the word of mouth will finally get the rest of them to crack. Those that have switched love how much easier it has been to get good information. They have it sent to them, instead of having to go looking for it!!!!!
I think one of the problems that I had with Twitter the first time that I used it, was that I was following basically the same people on Twitter as I had RSS feeds for. Therefore, I really felt that I was just getting the same information twice - in different formats. This time around I am trying to follow some different people of Twitter and I think that it will actually be really beneficial.
The other topic we were supposed to be looking at this week is photo sharing sites. Good, Creative Commons and/or copyright free image sites are really important. However, my students have run in to a number of inappropriate images on Flicker. They had typed in very innocent search terms and pulled up some disturbing pictures that weren't being blocked by our system. I have created a list of other sites that they can use as an alternative to google, ones with either Creative Commons or copyright free images, but Flicker is not on the list.
After looking at most our classmates’ blogs it is amazing to me how few of our peers have used RSS. Give how the orange RSS links are ubiquitous around the web, I would think that its use would be more widespread. I don’t know why more people have not picked up on the practice or why it is so difficult to convert people to use it.
ReplyDeleteI agree Flickr can have some inappropriate pictures (same with a google image search). I would love to know what sites you recommend for your students that are CC and don't have as many inappropriate pictures. I teach 5-6th graders and they have a hard time dealing with pictures that come up that aren't appropriate.
ReplyDeleteI am struggling to use both Twitter and RSS feeds as well. I do feel like it is a little repetitious to use both. When we are done with this class I won't keep doing both because to me it is too many things to check. I wish I had time use all of these wonderful tools, but in the end I think you need to pick what works for you and what you have time for.
I don't think it makes sense for people to be using Twitter and RSS readers at the same time either. If someone likes to see a bunch of links, then use Twitter. If they want to briefly skim headings and the first few sentences of blogs or articles, then use RSS Readers. A Blog is much more rich in content, in my opinion, than clicking on someone's links. A lot of times people have everything synced up together anyways so you'll be fishing through the same information.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't done much with RSS feeds up until this point because I hadn't taken the time to find out what they really did and were about. At first I didn't see how they were any different that Twitter or an email subscription to get blog updates, but now I really like RSS because of the simple differences. I like having one place to go to get the things I can to keep up with and can change them easily. I also tried hard to really keep my list of feeds focused to only those that I really wanted to keep up with on a regular basis so that I didn't get annoyed with a bunch of useless updates and end up skipping over the good ones that I really wanted to catch.
ReplyDelete