Journal 7

Mining for Gold

Bigenho, C (March/April 2009). Mining for Gold. Learning and Leading with Technology, 36, Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/200904/

Author Chris Bigenho explains how integral RSS can be to teachers in the education of students. RSS (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) technology is a tool which allows an Internet user to collect specific information and receive it all on a specific page, rather than surfing a myriad of sites. It is comprised of two parts, feeds and aggregators. The feed finds the information through HTML and the aggregators read, track and notify you of the new information.

A savvy teacher is able to subscribe to various RSS feeds on sites that contain news on the specific topics of curriculum and bookmark them for their students to access through the schools learning management system. Then to keep track of each students blog, the educator can subscribe to their blogs through subscriptions as well.

What are some benefits of using RSS in a classroom?
If your students have a classroom blog RSS helps save time because it tells you when there are new posts. RSS also allows a collaborative learning environment for both teachers and students. The teachers and students can learn from each other.

What is the difference between an Internet hosted aggregator and client based aggregator?
An Internet hosted aggregator, such as iGoogle or Google Reader, allows the user to access their feeds from any location or computer. A client based aggregator, like Safari requires the user to be at the computer to access the feed.