Journal#7: "Mining for Gold"

Bigenho, Chris (March 2009). Mining for Gold. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37, Retrieved March 25, 2009, from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/200904/

Chris Bigenho, a director of educational technology, educates us about RSS aggregators in his article "Mining for Gold". RSS aggregators are defined as Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary that fetch information for Internet users using subscriptions. All this information is then organized onto a website for you. Bigenho explains the benefits of using RSS feeds for the current educator. Students can subscribe to feed that the teacher creates and can there have articles that must be read for class assignments, or a feed can be placed on their student blogs and the teacher will be notified of new posts. RSS aggregators are great time savers and have great efficiency for teachers who must keep up with all the news. Bigenho explains that there are two parts to RSS, the feed andthe aggregator. Feeds are in XML and have channel tags containing specific information. Aggregators read the tags, track the page and notify you. Each feed is divided into two classes, the client side and the Internet hosted. He further explains how to use them with student blogs, social bookmarking and to feed content to HTML pages. Lastly, step by step directions are provided for creating a custom feed.

Q1: What are the two types of aggregators?
A1: The first is internet hosted such as Bloglines and iGoogle that can be accessed from any computer that is connected to the internet. The second is client-side, these are included in the browsers and operating systems such as Safari and Vista.

Q2:Are RSS feeds useful tools for a teacher to use in their classroom?
A2: Yes, definitely! They reduce the teachers workload is searching the internet for topic related information to their unit, they create an easily accessible space on the internet for students to have access to that information. Also, new roads to information expand the students' creativity and encourage them to keep looking for more. Also, it provides students with knowledge about how to navigate through technology.