Using RSS Feeds - A liberating and empowering feeling.
I've recently begun to explore the fascinating RSS Feeds world and I find it to be so useful with Feedly as my reader of choice. I have added quite a number of feeds and and even set them up into categories, including News, Technology, Education and Cooking. I now, almost religiously, scan my reader every morning and evening to catch up on interesting articles that I have subscribed to. Through my RSS feeds I stumbled across an article "Blazing the education trail", I found this to be a very inspiring article about four home schooled girls who's parents opted to deviate from traditional mainstream education, customizing each of their education to suit their individual interests and talents resulting in amazing accomplishments by them all. I have subscribed to Ted Talks and CNN just to name a few, and also found a interesting article on Digital Citizenship.
I've recently begun to explore the fascinating RSS Feeds world and I find it to be so useful with Feedly as my reader of choice. I have added quite a number of feeds and and even set them up into categories, including News, Technology, Education and Cooking. I now, almost religiously, scan my reader every morning and evening to catch up on interesting articles that I have subscribed to. Through my RSS feeds I stumbled across an article "Blazing the education trail", I found this to be a very inspiring article about four home schooled girls who's parents opted to deviate from traditional mainstream education, customizing each of their education to suit their individual interests and talents resulting in amazing accomplishments by them all. I have subscribed to Ted Talks and CNN just to name a few, and also found a interesting article on Digital Citizenship.
I found that RSS feeds allow me to get the content that I am
interested in free from distracting ads, it also saves me time in that, I do
not have to spend additional time searching for article that I need; With RSS,
they come to my device! Prior to using RSS feeds, I was subjected to reading articles
that were not interesting or useful to me. News articles were filled with irrelevant
data that took up too much time even when scanning. I no longer have to be a
recipient of ads and promotions thrown to
me daily, by marketing companies, that have 'statistically analyzed and accumulated
data based on my browsing history and patterns'!
There are unlimited positive possibilities for the use of
RSS feeds in the field of education; Quoting from an article I read recently, "In a ‘socially mobile learning environment, it
is no longer sufficient to use online learning and teaching technologies simply
for the delivery of content to students. A ‘digital literacy’ exists where
flexible and mobile technologies must be explored for collaborative and
(co)creative purposes, as well as for the critical assessment and evaluation of
information".
I am content being in control of what I want to read or learn. It's a liberating feeling to be able to choose what I want to read and have
updates come to me automatically, it also gives that feeling of empowerment
to have something as powerful as the internet at your will. This is definitely
a tool to be used in growing my PLE.
References:
Duffy, Peter D. & Bruns, Axel (2006)
The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities.
In Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, 26 Sep. 2006, Brisbane.
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