RSS feeds are like subscribing to a newspaper: it comes to you. Except with RSS (take your pick: rich site summary or really simple syndication), the content on the blog or other website that you subscribe to comes to you instead of you going to each website.
Why use RSS?
- Subscribe to all of your students' blogs
- Create search feeds for news groups and news (via Google News or Yahoo News)
- Create search feeds for websites and blogs
- Get current information on a topic or issue for class studies and projects,.
How to use RSS?
- Begin with Bloglines, a great online reader. (Pretam Rai has written an excellent how-to guide on "Using Bloglines".)
Also, Will Richardson has a everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-RSS article called "RSS: An extended guide for educators" (pdf). He also has a post on why to use RSS Magic. The main point is this:
And maybe that’s the new strategy, get teachers and students rss-ing first. Give them a framework for understanding how disparate looking pieces of content really aren’t as disconnected as they seem, and that there are new ways to find and collect and archive ideas from any number of previously unknown places. That all this seemingly random creativity is really not so random at all, that it is “loosely joined” in ways that allow us to make it even more relevant and effective in our practice and in our learning.
