RSS

Though I have not always been clear about what the letters RSS stand for I have been a huge fan of the concept for the past few years, especially when it comes to technology websites such as slashdot.org and engadget.com. Over the past few years I have realized that one some websites I spent too much time looking through information and commercials that did not matter to me, and sometimes just annoyed me, which is where the beauty of RSS feeds come in. I have been able to go straight to articles that interest me and not bother with useless information. However, just because RSS feeds have many benefits does not mean they are perfect!
Though I have stumbled across the definition of RSS a few times in the past few years I never paid much attention to it because I did not need to. What I was doing was great for me so the definition was unimportant. However for this assignment I took the time to learn more about it and found that according to the website whatisrss.com RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary" which is "a format for delivering regularly changing web content. As an avid RSS user I understand that while RSS originally stood for rich site summary more often than not it is now referred to as "Really Simple Syndication" as softwaregarden.com stated.
No matter which acronym you prefer the point is that using a RSS feed allows you to view updated content without the need to browse through pages and pages of information.

The first time I ever used a RSS feed I do so by clicking on a small icon on the right hand side of the address bar in Firefox. I do not remember what website I was browsing, it might have been slashdot.org or possibly another technology website. What I do remember is Firefox asking me if I wanted to use a built in reader or another program. This being my first encounter with RSS I chose to use Firefox's built in reader.
While Mozilla has made huge changes to its browser in the past couple years there have also been changes to its RSS reader. It seems to be a little more streamlined now as there is no option to open the RSS feed with any other reader (though there are probably plenty of add-ons for that) and you can immediately choose a location to bookmark the feed.
For this assignment I chose to use Firefox's built in RSS reader and Apple's Mail RSS reader. I just received a MacBook from school this year and almost always have the Mail program open when the computer is on so I might as well try a seperate program that I might use in the future as opposed to installing a program that I already know I will not use. The biggest difference I noticed between the two was the ease of viewing a RSS feed in a browser, which is where the web page will open anyway, versus opening another program which will take you to a browser after choosing a feed of your liking. While each RSS feed in Mail showed when the article was published, something I could not see in the Firefox reader, if I see an article I like I can always view the date and time it was published while looking at the actual article.
Below is a screenshot of the setup I have in Firefox:

And a screenshot of the RSS feeds in Mail:

I did not face any issues in setting up the feeds. As I mentioned, I have been using RSS feeds for a while now and find them easy to set up and use. Between the two programs I find it easier to set up an RSS feed in Firefox as all you have to do is click on the RSS icon in the address bar for most pages while to enter the same address into an outside program it can take some research to find out what address to use for the feed.
While I highly recommend fellow faculty members use RSS feeds for educational sites I cannot see it happening without someone telling/showing them how RSS feeds work and how they can be useful to an educator. While I have not checked, I doubt any other teachers at my school use RSS feeds. Personally I think a big reason some teachers have problems with saving various websites, whether it be through del.icio.us, foxmarks, or any other bookmarking site/program, is they do not understand that there are options out there that allow them to get the same bookmarks at home that they have at school. Even with the huge amount of work high school teachers have to do I believe if they are given the proper tools and instruction they could very easily take advantage of RSS feeds.
Many of the technology links I showed in the first screenshot I use in class as discussion topics. I teach six different courses, from web design to accounting, and everything in between so there is always an article or two I can use in class. Examples, because the image is a little small, are lifehacker.com, engadget.com, and slashdot.org. A site like http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/ can also be very helpful for an instructor looking for free audio clips and even has a RSS feed! Entrepreneurship instructors could use http://www.nfib.com/page/home, which also has multiple RSS feeds depending on what part of the site you would like to keep up with, as a great resource.

As I stated, with some guidance educators could take advantage of RSS feeds. But for what reason? The first reason is for the reasons I listed in the previous paragraph. If an instructor finds a website with great resources and has a RSS feed it can save them a lot of time looking through the RSS feeds as opposed to having to scroll through every full length article. I think it would be very beneficial for teachers to have a web page with a RSS feed to a homework type page so students could go view the RSS feed and instantly know what is coming up or if they have missed something. The same could be said for principles. I have no doubt many principals want to know what the teachers are doing and using a RSS feed could be a simple way to find this out.

In summary I hope it is easy to see that I love the idea of RSS feeds and use them as much as I can. I can imagine teachers using RSS feeds in the future to help students keep track of assignments, though this probably will not happen as soon as I would like it to.

References

What is RSS: A tutorial introduction to feeds and aggregators. (2004, July 6).
Retrieved February 3, 2009, from Software Garden: http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html

What Is RSS? RSS Explained. (n.d.). Retrieved February 3, 2009, from What is RSS: http://www.whatisrss.com/