RSS in Teaching & Learning

R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Brought to you by members of the Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Shelley Rodrigo & Biray Alsac Plus: Devon Adams, Lyndsi Johnson, Sharon McLaughlin, Steve Puklin, &Ann Tolzman Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by loic hay http://www.flickr.com/photos/loic_hay/139185436/

P roject D escription

This project explores how and why teaching students to use RSS will better organize their educational experiences as well as more effectively facilitate their learning.

Identifying pedagogically sound methods of incorporating RSS aggregators into courses to help instructors and students filter and organize vast amounts of data found on the internet.

Assessing faculty and student perceptions on whether or not RSS aggregators facilitate learning objectives.

R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by pollyalida http://flickr.com/photos/pollyalida/491540129/

P roject D escription

RSS aggregators enhance student learning by creating a space where students and instructors can

share resources found online,

follow the posts of colleagues and classmates,

gather podcasts published on interests in their disciplines,

monitor cutting edge research, collaborate on projects and research, and

generate further scholarship into their given fields of study.

RSS protocol awards a space and tool that streamlines the exchange of disciplinary information and increases awareness of important developments in various disciplines.

R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by inju http://www.flickr.com/photos/inju/97426906/

What is RSS ? R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community RSS stands for " R eally S imple S yndication". It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading. Software Garden, Inc. (2004). From: http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html OR RSS in Plain English

What is RSS ? R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by jintan http://flickr.com/photos/jintan/363837160/ What problem does RSS solve? Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable schedule. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious. Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem, unfortunately, they are usually disorganized and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for spam. RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email. Software Garden, Inc. (2004). From: http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html

What is RSS ? R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by Brajeshwar http://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/271205508/

HES 100 : Healthful Living L esson P lan Students will set up their own personal blog through Blogger.com. They will use this forum to reflect upon their own personal health choices as well as topics discussed in class. Through their blog students will subscribe to at least two different news feeds which provide information specifically about Health and Wellness issues. Several times during the semester students will be asked to identify an article of interest in a specific topic area, summarize and provide a personal reflection on the article and post it in their blog. R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by Tama Leaver http://www.flickr.com/photos/tamaleaver/66462706/

ENG111 : Technical Writing L esson P lan In this course you will be responsible for constructing your very own personal portal to writing resources available on the internet. As a part of that portal you will link to static resources that provide writing help as well as subscribe to dynamic resources that regularly publish various tips and tricks to improve your writing. This assignment will include three major deadlines for the portal page itself, as well as various “rolling” deadlines for you to apply the information you learn from the internet. R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by loic hay http://www.flickr.com/photos/loic_hay/110132453/

ENG111 : Technical Writing R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community

HES 100 or WED110 L esson P lan

In this course you will be responsible for keeping current on incoming health and wellness information via RSS feeds aggregated through Twitter. You will also use Twitter to create your own outgoing wellness messages and healthy activities.

Subscribe to HES100 Student Feds

Subscribe to 10 different Health, Fitness, Wellness Feeds

Report on Incoming Feeds

Create Outgoing Feeds

R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by jrhode http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrhode/375671790/

HES 100 or WED110 R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community

S tudent P erspectives Initial Feedback R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by mstephens7 http://flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/279280606/

S tudent P erspectives Initial Feedback R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by Josh Bancroft http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshb/24560842/

Student Comments about Setting Up RSS Aggregators

Adding feeds are not always clear as to how they work.

It was difficult to find sites that I wanted to add, but not difficult to add them

This part was fairly simple because Google had it all set up for me.

I do not know what a RSS aggregator is. Maybe I have done it- not sure.

When there are so many feeds its hard to find the important ones from the teacher.

Once you figure it out, its easy.

S tudent P erspectives Initial Feedback R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by travelinlibrarian http://flickr.com/photos/travelinlibrarian/534589284/

S tudent P erspectives Final Feedback R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by vaXzine http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaxzine/2458806392/

S tudent P erspectives Final Feedback R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by kk+ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/21367593/

Students comment on why they will keep their RSS Aggregators:

I will continue to use iGoogle to get customized feeds per my interests and possibly in relation to the classes I happen to be taking.

(I will) shift focus back from health to technological breakthrough because as a tech I like to keep apprised of latest innovation.

I will add blogs that I will find useful to my nursing career.

I like that it's all on one page rather then going to different sites.

I like hearing about all the daily news concerning what I am interested in.

Overall I just enjoy reading the articles. For example, I find many of the Grammar Girl podcasts and articles very entertaining. That resource as especially made me feel more connected with writing. I discovered new areas of writing, as well as new viewpoints from people all over the USA. I would like to try to continue using this resource especially so that I can stay connected to writing while I am not taking a writing course.

S tudent P erspectives Final Feedback R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by zeroinfluencer http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeroinfluence/202467931/

Students comment on why they will NOT keep their blogs:

It is of no interest to me and I already have set ways on how I retrieve information.

No use anymore, the course is ending.

I said many times... I had no idea what the heck was going on with it. I had no idea how to use it.

Because it was difficult to set up and I don’t really have any other purpose for them.

I have RSS on my AOL homepage, so I'd probably use that if I wanted to use an RSS aggregator. I don't really see myself using one at all, but it's good to know about in case I ever do. I may have a use for it one day. I wasn't opposed to setting it up, because it's good to learn about these things. They may be useful in the college experience.

I nstructor P erspectives Project Reflections Utilizing the RSS features that they embedded in their blogs hasn't been as much of a hit. While most of the students do pick at least one article off their feed to read and respond to, few are doing more than just picking the first article they see. So really its not a lot different than if I just asked them to Google for an article related to health on any given day. While some students have drawn my attention to some articles I did not run across myself, and a few have been able to add some interesting extra information to classroom discussion. -- Sharon McLaughlin R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by draggin http://flickr.com/photos/draggin/398422382/

I nstructor P erspectives Project Reflections While they all answered the prompt, some students still had trouble finding topics. I think I didn’t tie Google Reader into their learning blogs enough. I gave them one entry on it, and that’s it. In retrospect, I should have made them read from it and react to it on a weekly basis. It could have been an exercise in reflecting in writing on the world around them or something like that. Will I use RSS in future classes? Yes. Now that I’m more comfortable with the technology, we’ll use it again and more frequently. I like the idea of having weekly accountability in the learning blogs that I require of all my students. As a one-shot experiment, I think it worked. But as a continual part of our class, I think it can work even better. I think RSS is a tool that will encourage my students to take a look at the world around them. I still think it can be a source of writing inspiration. -- Steve Puklin R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by HeckMeck http://flickr.com/photos/andreaswilking/224655192/

I nstructor P erspectives Project Reflections It is one thing to explain to the students how “cool” this tool is in helping them organize their information, and see that they “get” it and see the need for such a thing. But, it is quite another thing to actually get them to, download the reader from Google, sign up for the individual feeds, and then find the time to actually read the incoming information. Somewhere along the translation things broke down. In the initial class the reception was warm, but the actual follow through was disappointing. Spend more time in the actually class working with them on this new technology. The activity was set up in such a way as to take very little to no class time. The video was shown a very brief introduction was given and all the work was done outside of the class, including the surveys. I think the buy in from the students would have been much greater if more class time had been allotted. -- Ann Tolzman R eal S imple A ggregation to Continue Technological Successes Jetsons New Technology Faculty & Professional Learning Community Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by jintan http://flickr.com/photos/jintan/363837160/

R eal S imple A ggregation Conclusions Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by Kyle Wegner http://www.flickr.com/photos/14589496@N05/2371165319 Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by Chesi-Fotos CC http://flickr.com/photos/pimkie_fotos/2452196744/

Brought to you by members of the

Jetsons New Technology

Faculty & Professional Learning Community

Shelley Rodrigo-shelley.rodrigo@gmail.com

Biray Alsac-befitwithbiray@gmail.com

Devon Adams-devoncadams@gmail.com

Lyndsi Johnson-ljhealthyandwell@gmail.com

Sharon McLaughlin-sharon.mclaughlin@mail.mc.maricopa.edu

Steve Puklin-puklin@gmail.com

Ann Tolzman-atolzman@mail.mc.maricopa.edu

Y our T urn! Go to www. google .com/reader Creative Commons Copyrighted Image Posted at Flickr by Peter Forret http://flickr.com/photos/pforret/117254772/