RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS allows a reader to monitor other blogs or websites and receive automatic notification whenever these tagged sites are updated. The benefit of an RSS feed is that it saves the user lots of time without the need to continually visiting each blog or website, every day or multiple times each day, to see if new content of interest has been added. A user may receive one or as many RSS feed notifications as they choose by simply registering with a "reader" program. A top ten list of reader programs and aggregators may be found at About.com (Tschabitscher, 2010).
Once the user has registered with a reader or aggregator provider; they then visit their favourite blogs, wikis and websites; locate the RSS feed icon(s) and click to subscribe to that forum. All that is left to do now is to follow these RSS updates in their reader and click for further information if interested in a topic.
I will apply this technology to the learning environment in a number of ways:
1. Students use RSS feeds to share a group blog related to their assignments or reflections of learning for the day or subject. This allows others to learn from their peers or to assist with areas of uncertainty. Students may also seek feedback on their assignment work from others (internal and externally in conjunction with teacher content moderation) or wish to provide feedback or comment to others once they have posted information.
2. Teachers may use RSS feeds to monitor progress of students, may provide feedback or direction by responding to specific postings of the student. Teachers may also post podcasts (audio files) and vodcasts (video files) to their own class blog. This enables the classroom content / discussion to be made available to students 24 hours a day and 7 days each week. This may aid some students who find it difficult to absorb all of the information within a class environment for any number of reasons. Teacher may also use a blog to communicate with other stakeholders.
3. Parents and principle carers may use RSS to follow their Childs learning and progress and become involved in their Childs learning process as allowed by the child. Parents and carers may also receive RSS feeds from teacher blogs specific to activities, requests and other important notices issued by teachers. This may even extend to postings related to student homework and assignments.
4. Other external peers, community businesses / associations or general public. Again, moderation would be applied before comments from these sources are posted to student blogs as feedback or comment or instructions. Allowing students to take their projects based assignments into authentic real world situations, address real problems, seek real feedback and propose real solutions; in following this model, the teacher may achieve the core principles within Engagement Theory. These are Relate-Create-Donate (Kearsley and Shneiderman, 1999).
References
Kearsley, G. & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm
Tschabitscher, H. (2010). About.com:email: Top 10 windows RSS feed readers and news aggregators. Retrieved from http://email.about.com/od/rssreaderswin/tp/top_rss_windows.htm
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