StigmergicWeb

I was going to title this Dean kicks educators in the RSS, but reconsidered.

But seriously, Dean Shareski just gave a great session on RSS. I think the trick that he hit onto, besides a great intro with a thoroughly engaging presenation (which proved that Powerpoint does not have to be considered a tool to lull your audience into a hypnagogic state), was avoiding the discussion of what is RSS as much as possible, instead focusing on what you can do with RSS.

Dean was also trying to do a bit of recording of the presentation, so I hope that there will be a podcast/screencast coming out of this from him. In the meantime, here are some of my impressions.

Life before RSS - simple and fun! (Great slide) But eventually, there is so much stuff out there, it gets difficult to make sense of it all.

Dean has a picture of me and Noami (at her soccer game) on his slide show. Dean says that I strike him as quite geeky (or at least I did back in our EDCMM 802 days - I wonder if my geek factor has worn off since then?).

The first time Dean looked at RSS, it scared him. (big laughs - Dean is a great presenter). It stands for really simple syndication. “Syndication for me is when Seinfeld goes into re-runs“

Newsreader - a place/program where you can read info that is syndicated by RSS. Bloglines is a good one, and it is web based.

Finding RSS feeds to add to a newsreader. Problem that they don’t all look the same, but they are out there if we look carefully.

Checking my bloglines account is more important than checking my e-mail. It is professional development, personal development. There’s no spam - its just stuff that I want.

Cool RSS stuff:

• calendars
• packages
• auctions
• social bookmarks
• photos
• searches
• e-mail
• more stuff! (including breaking up with someone? Read the list for more details)

Educator’s guide to RSS by Will Richardson is a resource interested educators should look at.

Dean introduced us to his friends, via his bloglines account. Bloglines make it easy to add RSS feeds via a bookmarklet. Dean showed how easy it is by adding D’Arcy Norman to his bloglines list.

It is now about 15 minutes past the end of session, but everyone is still intently listening. RSS definitely is a technology that gets people’s brains going once they find out about it.

Suprglu A tool for rip, mix, feed with RSS - takes many RSS feeds and turns them into an uber-blog. I think this is too cool for words. Check out the EdTech Posse on Glu for details. (This could be the most powerful yet easy tool for creating ePortfolios!)

Great session, and really well done by Dean. There was a lot of buzz afterwards about how this could aid with the always present problem of sharing information in education.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2005 at 16:41 and is filed under small pieces, EdTech bloggers, RSS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.