Van Horn Week 2 - RSS Feeds

 

I have attended several conferences with workshops where RSS was discussed as an important tool for educators. I never, however, attended any of the workshops. I always thought, “I have more information than I can absorb already. What would I do with another source?” I subscribe to several email news services dedicated to my interests. I can’t process all the information I get from them. It was not until I was required in this course to look into RSS feeds that I saw their potential for education and for me personally. It reminds me of a quote often attributed to the legendary coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Tom Landry. When asked for his definition of a coach he replied, “A coach is someone who makes men do what they don’t want to do so that they can become what they want to be.” Maybe an Ed Tech teacher is a person who makes their students do what they don’t want to do so that they can come to realize that they really did want to do it but didn’t know why.

 

What is RSS?

When one asks what RSS stands for a time frame must also be included, for RSS has had three different meanings at different times. Originally RSS stood for “Rich Site Summary”. Later the acronym was changed to mean “RDF Site Summary”. The current meaning “Really Simple Syndication” is associated with RSS 2.0. RSS is based on XML. Formerly, in RSS 1.0, it was based on a specialized form of XML known a RDF, Resource Description Framework. RDF is one of the foundational technologies for the emerging semantic web.

For the consumer of RSS feeds, it is a technology that allows users to “subscribe” to a web resource: blog, wiki, news source, etc. and receive notification of any new entries. In fact an RSS feed is a url (or more accurately a uri) for an xml file that contains information about the associated resource. The xml file utilizes tags defined in the RSS namespace such as: Title, Author, Publish Date, URL, Category, Author, etc. to provide metadata about the resource. The subscriber views this information using an RSS reader. The RSS reader parses and displays the information in an easily readable format. The RSS XML looks like this:

<item>

<title>Equine Training Teleseminar Series - Starting Jan 2009</title>

<link>http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/equine-training-teleseminar-series-starting-jan-2009/12608920/</link>

<description><![CDATA[

<a href='http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/equine-training-teleseminar-series-starting-jan-2009/12608920/'><img src='http://images.mefeedia.com/entries/12608920/video_120.png' width='120' height='95' /></a><br />

From : Metacafe - Today's Videos by Metacafe<br />Join the teachers and visionaries from the movie in a special FREE teleseminar series starting early January 2009. You are invited to join the experts and the maker of the documentary each week for 5 weeks and learn about the latest thinking in horse training and horse human relationships ]]></description>

<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:40:12 -0500</pubDate>

</item>

The RSS reader formats the information into something like this:

Issues during the setup/install.

Setting up the RSS readers was pretty straightforward. The main issue for both the online, Google Reader, and installed versions, RSS OWL, was paring down all the delivered feeds. There is just so much data out there in RSS feeds.

With minimal assistance I believe that high school and college students could setup and install either the online or installed reader. Staff, administrators, parents and other adults may need to be assisted and encouraged more, however. I would suggest in a K-12 setting that an RSS reader be part of the standard software image for district computers. Standardizing on one of the RSS readers would help to mitigate many support issues.

Differences between the online and the installed version.

Both versions have there pluses and minuses. Google Reader being part of the Google application suite has the added convenience and can be incorporated into your iGoogle homepage. RSS Owl has the advantage of being accessible even when there is no internet access. I will, however, probable elect Google Reader as my permanent RSS reader.

Interesting RSS links

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  Inside Higher Education - http://insidehighered.com/

  
  
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  University Business - http://www.universitybusiness.com/dailynewshome.aspx. Although I had already subscribed to the email version, I believe I prefer this one.

  
  
• 
  

  Semantic Web blog - http://www.semanticfocus.com/

  
  
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  My son’s photo blog. He is trying to post a new image every day - http://vanhornvisuals.blogspot.com/

How can you use RSS in education

The following list of educational benefits and uses for RSS comes from “The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities” (Duffy, Burns 2006).

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5398/1/5398.pdf

• Lecturers and students can keep track of their favourite websites from one convenient location, without any interface clutter.

• Lecturers and students can be notified of updates from many websites that are relevant to the course topics. This is a very efficient use of time. Whatever the lecture topic, there will be a large number of blogs, wikis, news, research and media sites that are consistently publishing material relevant to the topic; rather than re-visiting all of these sites on a daily basis, using RSS technology learners and teachers can easily track new developments on each of these sites.

• RSS is a better solution than an email list subscription, as it does not require users to give out their email addresses, avoiding the potential for spammers to obtain their email details.

• In using blogs with students, instead of visiting each student’s individual blog teachers can subscribe to an RSS feed that allows them to obtain instant notifications and updates relating to any new content added. This will dramatically reduce their workload. Additionally, students themselves can also subscribe to the feeds of their friends, peers and teachers.

• Lecturers and students can establish RSS feeds relating to assignment topics and areas of research interest. This allows access to up-to-date content on a wide variety of subjects automatically.

• From an administration perspective, higher education portals often offer targeted collections of links for students, staff, parents, visitors, and alumni. Most users start their portal experience with a time sensitive task to accomplish. Users typically ‘pull’ down information from a site. Within the RSS model users can have information ‘pushed’ to them that is customised to their personal interests.

In addition , administrators can keep informed by subscribing to journals such as Inside Higher Education, and University Business.

The London School of Economic and Political Science is using enhanced RSS feeds from each training organization on campus to consolidate all the training available on campus into a common portal. In addition to the standard RSS tags in the feed they have added their own tags such as <location>, <schedule>, and <audience>. (Secker and Fryer 2008) Once a feed is created and accessed, its use is not limited to a standard reader. Applications like the one at LSE can be built to take advantage of the metadata available in the feed.