Nuts and Bolts #2 - RSS in the Classroom

RSS is probably the most powerful web 2.0 technologies that have become available in recent years. The ability to subscribe to information, to design an information space, path, and portal that is personalized to your needs fundamentally changes our relationship with information and data. Unfortunately, RSS is also probably one of the most underused technologies out there.

Over the last two years, I've had my students sign up for accounts at Bloglines (although I think I am going to change to Google reader this year....). We begin with my giving them 4 - 6 information sources they must subscribe to. We call this required reading. I choose these blogs based on what we are studying currently in class and also based on information I feel it is important for the kids to be accessing on a regular basis. For example, when we were working on our Teen Life project last year, I had the kids subscribe to the Global Voices news feeds from both Colombia and Malaysia as these were two nations I felt they had little experience or understanding of and I wanted them to get a sense of these two places for this project. As well, I've had them subscribe to the blog Nata Village kept by several nurses in Botswana who are living through the AIDS epidemic in Africa. I felt it was vital for them to have some personal sense of the tragedy unfolding there and I feel the Western media does not give this enough coverage. Finally, I've also had students subscribe to the blog Info Aesthetics because I again wanted them to get some sense of the possibilities for how information can be displayed.

These blog choices will change over the year depending on what we are doing in class and what I feel the students need to be reading. I've found that these feeds are an important starting point for students to simply get used to using RSS and a reader as many of them have never heard of this technology before they hit my class. Whatever you are choosing for your students, choose carefully and with purpose. I want my students to gain a global perspective and an understanding of how information is changing, this is why I chose these blogs. If you want your students to be immersed in the latest scientific developments, or changes in computer science, find them feeds in these areas.

Besides these required reading blogs, over the first month of school, I get students to find approximately 10 other student bloggers and subscribe to their feeds. I give them starting points (other classes that I know are blogging that I have located or classes that we are working with) and tell them to find others whose writing is interesting, powerful, and who they can relate with. This is sometimes a long process and I want my students to read a wide variety of other bloggers before they settle on a beginning list. Whoever they choose to subscribe to, I have the final say about acceptability or not and will delete any feeds I feel are inappropriate.  We will talk about their accounts, who is in it, why they find them valuable, and if they need more or less voices in their network. I also tell them that the wonderful thing about RSS feeds is that they are free and disposable. Their network should change and evolve over time to meet their information needs. Of course, kids being kids, some of them delve deeply into RSS and soon drown themselves in feeds and we need to work together to prune their accounts. Others find 10 bloggers who they keep all year and expend little effort into the task.

The fact is that RSS is different for kids. They are used to being spoon fed information from often outdated textbooks which they hate reading. But when it comes right down to it, textbooks are easy. They simply have to open them to a certain page when they are told and work with whatever they find. RSS requires them to be active and involved with the collection and evaluation of the information they work with. They need to find trusted nodes and work with their "information pipe."

As with anything else, to make RSS work in the classroom requires time and careful observation of your students. They need time to locate feeds, to read through their readers and work with what they find by writing blog posts of their own, leaving comments for other authors, or using the information in other ways that you have set up for them. But the opportunity to have students work with real information that is continually updated and created by people with authentic voices is definitely worth this time. RSS can change the relationship your entire classroom has with information.

If you've made it through this long post, congratulations.

technorati tags:RSS, classroom, connections, google, reader, node

Comments

[Leif (Norway)]

interesting reading! Switching to Google reader? One of the things I enjoy with Bloglines is that I value the easy possibility to look into other people subscriptions. As far as I can see, this is not possible with Google reader (?). But - I guess that Google reader still is the better choice as we already use other Google tools....
I will also look for RSS-feeds that I will require my students to follow. (School starts on Monday - all my students will this year have laptops which give some many possibilities.

[Nancy McKeand]

Thanks for spelling this out so completely. I look forward to trying to use RSS with my students.

[Nancy McKeand]

Thanks for spelling this out so completely. I look forward to trying to use RSS with my students.

[Brian Mull]

Hey Clarence, I know you get your kids to do a lot of presenting and sharing. One blog you might want to have your students subscribe to is Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds. He speaks a lot about the simplicity of giving the message. It's one of my favorite reads. Some of it might be over there heads though, but I think you have some pretty smart ones there ;)

http://www.presentationzen.com

[Jeff Stanzler]

Clarence, a couple of my teacher cert. students have been musing about the possible affordances of RSS feeds as a tool for learning. I especially appreciate the case you make for your use of RSS as a tool for *active* engagement...very nice.