KISS your Blogs with RSS

Before I get into the KISSing booth, I'd like to refresh the definition of a blog.
A blog, or web log, is like a journal where one writes about experiences, feelings and perspectives on a topic or a series of topics. The blog is updated regularly. Gooding (2008) defines a blog as "as personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be" (p.46). And you're reading one right now.

The number of blogs grows daily. It may be that we have found many that we like to read on a variety of topics that we are interested in. It takes a lot of time to go to each blog every day to read the latest posting. That's where RSS comes in to help!

When I first was introduced to RSS and feed aggregators (probably about the same time that I learned about Twitter and Delicious), I have to admit that I didn't understand it all. For those in the know, it all seemed straightforward. If you're haven't seen RSS and feed readers before, or haven't had any experience with them, it can be confusing. I actually avoided trying to use them because I just didn't have a clue.

I'm happy to say that I have gone from being clue-less to at least having half of one.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Or maybe you'd prefer Really Super (time)Saver. It's an easy way 'subscribe' to your favourite web sites or blogs, much like you would to your favourite magazines or newspapers. And just like having your latest issue of Time or the Australian Women's Weekly delivered to your home, the latest 'issues', or feeds, of your online interests can be delivered to your computer! This Keeps It Simple, Students (or Sweetie, or Stupid, or...you get the idea), KISS.

The 'home' delivery requires that you use a subscription service, or feed reader/aggregator to gather the most recent editions of your online New York Times or BBC news or Laura's Blog. This tool makes it easy for you to check for updates on your favourite sites without having to go to each individual web site to look for new postings. What the feed reader or aggregator does, is check all of your favourite sites for you, and brings the information to you in one easy-to-skim-through place!

There are several readers out there, including Bloglines, Google Reader or Pageflakes, just to name a few. I chose Google Reader, simply because I like the one-stop shopping that I have with Google--gmail, docs, blogspot, Picasa and reader. Once I'm signed into my email account, I am pretty much signed into all of the other applications and tools, ready to go.

Google Reader (http://reader.google.com)is easy to use, once you've signed up for it. Other aggregators are similarly easy. When you are on one of your favourite sites, if you can 'subscribe' to it, there will usually be an orange RSS symbol (like the one at the top of this blog) or an XML button in the web address/URL box or on the site page itself. Click on the button and you will be provided with options for delivery. If it is a favourite blog that you are following, there will be a link to "Follow this Blog". I then click on the Google Reader option, rather than the Homepage option so that all of my feeds appear in one separate place. If there isn't an RSS or XML button, you can copy the URL or web site address and paste it into the box that comes up when you click on the "Add a Subscription" button. Not all sites have the subscription option and Google Reader will let you know if the address you just pasted in will work or not.
I just tried it with one of my favourite aromatherapy sites and they don't have any kind of RSS feed. That's okay. 95% of the sites that are my favourites to visit DO have RSS subscriptions.

When you open Google Reader, web site updates appear on the right and this is where the skills of skimming and scanning come very handy. You can breeze through the new information to see if there's anything 'good' that day, much, much more quickly than visiting each site! If you click on the screenshot below, it will open in a slightly larger size for you.




I took Will Richardson (2009) up on his invitation to try Pageflakes (www.pageflakes.com). I first looked at his Darfur example at http://tinyurl.com/6lbup7 to see how it was done. Then I set up my own Pageflakes site for the H1N1 virus. We've had 12 deaths in Malaysia from the swine flu and the situation seems to be getting worse. We've taken some precautions at our school. Everyone who enters the school has their temperature taken every day and stations are set up all day to monitor all who come on campus. We've stepped up the disinfecting of computer keyboards and desks several times a day. I know that students and teachers are following the news on the virus, so I thought I'd try Pageflakes to help them out and will offer it to them on Monday. It took me a while to set it up as I ended up adding the feed boxes in a bit of a backward way. Some of the feeds are more general than specific and I found that too many tags didn't yield any results, so what I am getting for feeds may or may not be completely relevant to H1N1. I imagine it will take some tweaking....
http://tinyurl.com/ljct75
I can see Pageflakes being very useful for research topics, where students can collaboratively find and add feeds on a subject so that everyone has access to a number of great resources.

If you're trying Pageflakes, definitely use the big yellow snowflake button on the right for a quick and easy way to add the boxes!

It's great that we can check all of our personal favourite news and special interest sites and blogs in one place. But how does all of this apply to schools?
- In classroom situations, teachers can subscribe to student blogs so that we can follow their topic research, book journal, or what-have-you updates and assignments.
- Students (and teachers) can subscribe to RSS feeds by keywords for research topics so that any blog, news site or web site that updates information on that topic will be sent to the student.
- Teachers can set up a blog or web page with an RSS feed and students can subscribe to it. Assignments, new resources, relevant feeds can all be part of the page.
- Libraries can use RSS feed to deliver information on new materials to patrons in their particular area of interest.

What about for teachers and their professional development?
- There are literally thousands of blogs written by educators that are "reflecting on instruction, challenging assumptions, questioning policies, offering advice, designing solutions" (Ferriter, 2009, p.35). We can nudge our own thinking and ideas simply by following educational blogs. We can further push ourselves on by participating in discussions on those blogs.
- Reading, writing and responding to blogs helps us to become part of an online community where we can learn from and share with each other (Hill, 2005). Abram (2007) encourages teacher librarians in particular to get out there and write, even 15 minutes a week about something they learned or accomplished that week. We tend to be more isolated in our profession and online communities may be the best way for us to share, and we do have lots to share, with teachers and other teacher librarians.
- For some educators, professional development is a matter of sifting through blogs that they subscribe to. RSS allows us to have all the new ideas come to us in our feed reader on anything from teaching reading to first graders to art therapy for troubled teens.
- Ferriter (2009) suggests that writing our own blogs about teaching can help us to challenge our own thinking about classroom practices or have it challenged by others, and recommends using Edublogs (www.edublogs.org) as a starting point. Edublogs is dedicated to educators and you will be connected to an online community immediately.


How do teachers get started on their own online professional development?
There are excellent sites to search for blogs on any given topic:
- Technorati (http://www.technorati.com) is a search engine for blogs and can locate sites by keyword or topic.
- LibWorm (http://www.libworm.com) is the library version of Technorati and can locate blogs on anything to do with all kinds of libraries.
- Google's Blogsearch (http://blogsearch.google.com)is a good general blog search engine
- Support Blogging (http://supportblogging.com)is a wiki about the benefits of educational blogging and they have an extensive list of bloggers that one might find interesting to follow
- Check the list of blogs that other bloggers are following. Maybe there's something in their lists that you can't resist.

I've gotten started by following some blogs suggested in my Web 2.0 course through our Trailfire links or through the articles I've read. I'm also following my classmates' blogs and a couple other personal interest sites that I found using the Google Reader search.

The main thing is to try a few first. Find some blogs that you would like to follow or subscribe to. Set up your Google Reader, or similar aggregator. Use the RSS feed button to subscribe and start following! Before you know it your horizons will be expanding and you'll be discussing education, or another favourite topic, with people from all over the world.
But remember, in the beginning, for RSS, just KISS.


References
Abram, S. (2007). Teacher Librarians: Sharing and Taking Care of Themselves. Multimedia & Internet@Schools 14(5), pp.22-24. Retrieved August 4, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.

Ferriter, B. (2009). Learning with Blogs and Wikis. Educational Leadership 66(5), pp.34-38. Retrieved July 13, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.

Gooding, J. (2008). Web 2.0: A Vehicle for Transforming Education. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education 4(2), pp.44-53. Retrieved July 20, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.

Hill, C.R. (2005). Everything I Need to Know I Learned Online. Library Journal 130(3), pp.34-35. Retrieved August 4, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journal database.

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.