Tag: Google reader

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Death of RSS?

I’ve heard mentioned in a few forums recently about the ‘Death of RSS’. I’ve been thinking about it a bit recently myself. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to people no longer having time to get to the blogs and sites they subscribe to via their RSS readers. I use Google Reader for blog subscriptions but I have to admit, it’s become a long time between visits.   

Why is it so?

Simple.   Twitter.

That cool little 140 character stream of consciousness feed from the people I follow has become my most vital source of information. It is here where I discover blog posts as people filter and lead me to them, it is here where I get to know the latest and greatest next big thing, and it’s here where I can develop connections with some truly great minds who help me shape my thinking.

But this weekend was different. I laid off the twitter pursuit of new knowledge to invest some time in my Google Reader. And I’m glad I did. I read blog posts, I listened to the elongated thoughts of the people in my network and I benefited from the experience. I discovered links that hadn’t filtered through twitter. Maybe they had, but not when I was present.  Let’s face it, you can’t be there 24/7, and if you are someone who trawls back to see everything that happened while you were away, then I’m thinking it’s time to reevaluate things big time!

I still maintain that RSS is the best way to introduce people to understanding why you would want to change your practice and rethink what it means to be a teacher and a learner at this time. I think people need to read the deeper thinking of educators who are trying to harness new ways of doing things. Twitter is very fast, particularly if you follow a lot of people. It is difficult to understand its relevance when you first begin using it and it can turn people off who don’t have a good understanding of building a network.

RSS helps you build the network. Reading blogs helps you figure out who the thinkers are and they in turn lead you to the thinkers they admire. Once you’ve got a bit of a handle on the reasoning behind establishing your PLN (Personal Learning Network), you can then start following these people through twitter and build a network there.

Anyway, that’s my take on things. RSS may have lost some of its relevance with the growth of twitter, but I don’t think it’s dead. This weekend confirmed for me the need to reconnect with the deeper thinking of my network through people’s posts. Judy O’Connell linked to The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, written by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg, with the help of Zoe Marie Jones.  It’s a paper that has occupied my thinking for much of this weekend. Read it, courtesy of my Google Reader!!

 

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RefSeek – what is the future for subscription databases?

I was finally doing a bit of reading via my Google Reader, when I came across RefSeek, written up by Jane Hart on her very handy blog.

 Ref Seek is a website for students and researchers that accesses articles from web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers. The idea behind the site is to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. I did a couple of searches on topics for Australian audiences (Ned Kelly and Kevin Rudd) and it didn’t come up with really brilliant results, but it did source a couple of more specialised sites that were useful. Below is a screenshot of what you see when you click on directory at the top right hand side of the screen.

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Click on the links to the available sources of information and you will get an idea of the types of resources they are searching.  Below is a screenshot of some of the encylopedias used in the searches conducted.

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RefSeek is an interesting alternative for our students and makes me think about what the future may hold. I’m wondering how long subscription databases will continue as resources that schools pay for. Will they eventually become free resources and rely on advertising to generate income? At my school we subscribe to databases like eLibrary, World Book and Newsbank. We’ve made decisions in the last year to cut some of our subscriptions because we didn’t feel usage warranted the outlay of money required to sustain them. As we see the net evolve and semantic search engines like Mahalo generate pages of rich relevant results, we may see subscription database services feel the pinch. Already Brittanica offers bloggers access to widgets that can be embedded allowing your readers full access to articles on topics you write about. I have a feeling that we will see scholarly articles become more accessible as knowledge becomes more widely available.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’d be interested in hearing what others think.    

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Google Reader – Commoncraft helps explain what we’re all on about!

A turning point for me in my development as an online learner, was when I set up my Google Reader and started subscribing to blogs written by teachers and people interested in education and the impact of technology on learning. Whenever I talk to people about how I made the leap from someone with no idea to someone with some idea, I make reference to the importance of my Google Reader and how it keeps me up to date with current thinking.

Now I can point them to this. Lee and Sachi Lefever from Commoncraft (almost feel like I know them now!) have made a plain English video explaining Google Reader. Google asked them to do it. Way to go Lee and Sachi!

Watch and learn.

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Snackr – a new way to read RSS feeds

I read about Snackr while browsing through Download Squad  via my Google Reader. If you read a lot of blogs you’ll know that you have to have a means of managing the plethora of information you want (need!) to consume. My reader is invaluable – I subscribe to sites by pasting the url into the add subscription box within the reader and any new feeds from the blogs I subscribe to come to me directly. I don’t have to open a new tab and open the site each time I want to see what people in my educational network are writing about.

What I’ve found recently is a lack of time to get to all the reading done. Now that I’m active on Twitter coupled with the demands of my job (not to mention my family obligations!) I’m finding I’m time poor in relation to my reader. Although I’m finding the connections I’m making via Twitter incredibly valuable, I’m lamenting the fact that I’m missing some of the deeper thinking that is evident when you read what people are posting in their blogs.  

Snackr is going to help me manage my reading. Download Squad have explained it really well so I’ll block quote from them rather than try to paraphrase their thinking!

Snackr is an Adobe AIR-based RSS ticker that pulls random headlines from your RSS feeds and scrolls them along the bottom or the side of your screen, letting you click through to read anything that looks interesting. It’s not a replacement for your regular RSS reader, but it makes a great supplement. Snackr’s well worth checking out if you’re an information addict who has to have the fire hydrant open at all times.

  I suppose I am turning into an information addict. I downloaded Snackr (you have to make sure you have downloaded Adobe AIR first – easy to do) and now it’s running along the base of my screen. I’ve added feeds to the basic set that came when I downloaded the application. You can easily add or delete feeds. The scrolling was moving too quickly for me so I slowed it down – less likely to have an epileptic seizure now! Already I can see the benefits. I’m not finding the scrolling too obtrusive and I can easily click on an item that might be of interest. When I do up pops a box with part of the post visible. A quick read indicates whether or not I want to view the post in its entirity. Again, easy to do. Just click ‘view post’ and you’re redirected to the source.  If it becomes obstrusive you can collapse the ticker (I think that’s what it’s called!) so that you can concentrate on a task at hand.

I’m liking it so far! Thanks Jay Hathaway from Download Squad for giving me the heads up.

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Back from camp – time to tell you about Google Notebook

Returned from camp today. Had a great time with fantastic Year 7 students willing to give everything a go. I’m a huge supporter of Outdoor Education camps since I left on my first one two years ago. On that one, we paddled 60kms down Australia’s Murray River and camped on river beaches nightly for five days. HUGE learning curve for me – had to adapt very quickly and stay motivated even though I found it really difficult. At the end of the week I’d felt a shift in me – a sense of achievement and a bonding with a group unlike camp experiences I’d had before. Happens every time I do an Outdoor Ed camp – everyone grows in some way. Last night’s debrief session was wonderful – every student could articulate how they had learnt something and what they were going to take away from the experience – powerful stuff!

Something else that I think is pretty powerful and transformational for both teachers and their students is Google Notebook. At the moment I’ve got two Google Notebooks running. One I call blog ideas. What I do is open my notebook when I’m reading feeds from my Google Reader – it’s absolutely essential to get yourself a Google Reader (or other RSS feed service) if you want to subscribe to websites and receive updates that come directly to you rather than you having to go to the effort of finding the website every time you log on. My Google Reader has literally changed my life (and I’m not kidding!) Back to the point of the discussion – I open the Google Notebook called ‘blog ideas’ and what I can do is cut and paste things I’ve read into my notebook that I think might be a good idea for a blog post. It’s helping me to make sense of what I think is important and is also helping me to write posts on a frequent basis. If you remember, I’ve set myself the ridiculous target of attempting to write a blog post a day. Call me stupid -I’m already saying it to myself!

My other notebook is one that I’m using to collate ideas for a presentation I have to make with a colleague. Because we are going to have to work on this together, I have chosen the ‘Share this notebook’ option that is available to you when you use Google Notebook. This sends an invite to people you want to have access to the notebook so that you can both make contributions. It’s this collaborative potential that I think is transformational for staff and students. Teachers could use Google Notebook (or Google Docs) to work on developing ideas for units of work and students could use them for group projects. As individuals, teachers and students would find the Google Notebook valuable for collecting information from the Web for projects. I showed my notebooks to a researcher from a university in Melbourne and she could immediately see the potential this offered for the work she does.

If you haven’t seen it yet, get yourself a google account and check it out – I’m sure you’ll see ways to use this fantastic free resource immediately. Getting a google account is easy too – just register with an email address, user name and password. Dead simple and the benefits are huge.

I’m really comfortable  with my Google Reader and aren’t fussed about opening the notebook at the same time. Download Squad have just posted about a combined feed reader and blog client in one called YeahReader. Here’s how they describe how it works;

“In addition to the usual feed reader tools that let you mark items as read or unread, you can also click a “blog this” button to copy feed items into the blog client. “

They also point out this very valid point which is why I think bloggers should proceed with caution;

“Just be careful to use this power for good and not evil. In other words, if you’re going to say, write about an article you found on Download Squad, please don’t copy the whole article and pass it off as your own work. That’s what we like to call copyright infringement.”

They’re absolutely right – their article is worth a read – I’d encourage you to follow the link.

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Our flat world surprises mediasauce!

Had an interesting experience today.  The Elibrarian (a fantastic support – it’s wonderful having someone on staff who operates on the same page and can implement many of the ideas we talk about) sent me a link to a page that had featured on Stephen’s Lighthouse – Stephen Abram’s blog. We both subscribe to this site via our Google readers and love the fact that he shares so much of what he does. I really appreciate the fact that he posts many of his slides from presentations he gives – they are informative even if no audio accompanies them. Anyways, back to the story. The link was to a video called ‘Are you relevant?’, produced by Mediasauce for the Association of Fraternity Advisors in America. It’s pretty cool – a woman is talking to you and posing questions about how ‘young people’ communicate and how the ‘older generation’ uses communication devices like telephone books that are passe to people of her ilk. I really liked it and our Elibrarian put it on our Enewsletter for our staff to look at.

At the bottom of the page was a box asking ‘Like what you see?’ and offering more information if you clicked their link. It took me to an email window so I shot off an email to Scott Henderson from Mediasauce telling him I liked the video and would he mind if I wrote a post about it. What was interesting was his reply;

Thanks for the nice words about our site (our main site or the Are You Relevant? site).  We’re glad to let you write about it.  It’ll cost you one thing, though.   

You have to help me trace how you got the link.  I’d like to write a post on our blog about how an Australian college got connected to a company in Indiana, USA.

So of course, I sent off a reply explaining the process as outlined above. What I find interesting is that Scott found it fascinating how we got onto his video. Isn’t this exactly what they are exalting in their video. Our means of communication is changing and we need to adapt to these changes. My Google reader provides me with RSS feeds that are probably my primary source of information these days and it’s breaking down barriers in terms of comminication. As I replied to Scott, keeping up is the name of the game these days (as your video suggests!) 

   

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Information overload – get a Google reader!

I’m constantly amazed by the changes I have seen in myself over the last two and a bit years. They’re not physical (not to say that I’ve been unaffected by the ravages of time!), but more attitudinal. As I’ve become more familiar with technology, I’ve noticed a shift in my reading habits. I’m a Teacher- Librarian and English teacher, and have a deep love of the written word. I love eloquent, simple language that can evoke feeling and move me in some way. I love being so completely immersed in a novel that it transcends all else and I can do nothing but turn the pages. I love sharing the reading experience with my students. But I’ve noticed a change in my reading habits.

As I’ve developed my interest in what is possible with the Web, my love affair with the novel has waned. Maybe it’s just that I’m reading the wrong books, but I’m finding it more difficult to become engaged and commit the time needed to complete a novel. Two years ago I felt overwhelmed by the wealth of information flooding from the Web; today, not so much. I think this is because the type of reading I am doing has changed.  An essential part of my reading today is via my Google Reader. Here I access the latest feeds from people who write blogs that are of interest to me. Most of these are people involved in education from various corners of the world. These people are filtering the information overload that is the Web for me,  and I, in turn, am doing my bit by writing this blog and adding to the filtering process. By being part of this community I am helping to manage my own professional development and hopefully am assisting other people with theirs.  

What’s led me to this moment of introspection is a post from Will Richardson. He refers to an article in the Christian Science Monitor by Thomas Washington, a School Librarian. He discusses student reading habits and the perception that students dislike reading and have an aversion to it. He speculates that it is not an aversion, but rather a reaction to the information overload that is our modern world. He says, “For them, and now maybe for me, moving on to something else is an adaptive tactic for negotiating the jungle that is our information-besotted culture of verbiage.”

As much as I recognise a shift in my reading habits, I hope that I never tire of the pleasure that comes from total immersion in a story that moves me in some way. A large part of my job is to encourage students to read for their own enjoyment. I’m pleased to say that at my school there is a strong reading culture and we have many readers accessing our fiction collection, along with our biography/autobiographies and high interest non-fiction. One book of late that has had that special immersion factor is Meg Rosoff’s ‘What I Was’. I can’t tell you what it is about – it’s one of those novels that you spoil if you reveal too much. Meg’s novels are always interesting with unexpected plot twists and turns. Give it a go.