Techlearning blog

How do you receive and process information on a daily basis? Since you're reading this blog post, chances are good you receive a large amount of your information each day via the Internet. Last week I had an opportunity to share a workshop with higher education faculty titled "Powerful Blending: Using Web 2.0 to Interact, Create, and Assess." At the start of that workshop, and others during the week taught with Michael Kelly introducing people to the organization's new blog (The Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education - SITE blog), I started with that question.

Answers from most participants included other people (face to face conversations,) email, paper memos, newspapers, magazines, journals, radio and television. In each audience, only a few people reported using "aggregators" or "news readers" like Google Reader or Bloglines to access updated content via web feeds.

Whenever I teach others about blogs, I have to talk about web feeds. SITE, like other organizations, has attempted to get online conversations between conferences going with members via online discussion forums. The problem is that those websites do not generally become part of the REGULAR INFORMATION PROCESSING ROUTINES of people, and therefore the content there can become stale. It is challenging to build a dynamic online community, but if this is to be done with organizations using blogs, it is essential that more people learn about the value of web feeds and start to use feed aggregators to REGULARLY process and share information.

I use the metaphor of a "digital newspaper" when I discuss web feeds with others. Just like a newspaper you subscribe to which is delivered every day to your house, people can subscribe to web feeds which are subsequently delivered on a regular basis. Unlike email, which is a "push" technology, web feeds are a "pull" technology which come to you when you subscribe to them and request an update. People don't ask to receive most email messages: They are PUSHED by others to them. Web feeds are different. Users must REQUEST that web feed content come to them. This is PULLING information, and is different in fundamental ways from other information technologies like email.

Web feeds are proliferating on the Internet, and it is important that we talk about web feeds (along with their various acronyms: RSS, ATOM, XML, etc) with others. How are the teachers you work with on a daily basis going to learn about new technologies like these? Most likely they will only learn if someone like you has a CONVERSATION with them about it.

One powerful way to use RSS and web feed technologies is to create a FEED RIVER of content from multiple sources. Tools like KickRSS and Yahoo Pipes allow users (for free) to create single, larger web feeds that integrate multiple smaller web feeds together. Think of a large river, like the Mississippi, which is served by multiple smaller tributaries. I created a feed river called "digital dialog" this week which integrates dynamic feeds from del.icio.us on internet safety, from Google News on MySpace, from NetFamilyNews, from Technorati on Cyberbullying, and from Technorati on Internet Safety.

This single feed river is now available on the Ning social network I created awhile back on "Digital Dialog." Like many blogs and social networking tools, Ning permits users to add RSS content. Rather than adding multiple RSS feeds to the site, however, by using a FEED RIVER I was able to add just one web feed that includes multiple sources.

Talk to others you work with today about web feeds. Do they know about them? Better yet, create a FEED RIVER of content related to some research they or their students are doing, and show it to them. There's a good reason primary age kids love "show and tell" and not just "tell me." Showing as well as telling often leads to greater understanding, and it's up to teachers to talk to each other about emerging technologies like web feeds to "get the word out" to more people about how beneficial these resources can be for processing the information streams multiplying all around us.