Chapter 5 was all about RSS or Really Simple Syndication. The author said, “I think it’s the one technology that you should start using today right now, this minute.” I was surprised at this statement of RSS being so valuable because I have never heard of it. Then an RSS is explained as being a tool that lets you know when new information is put on sites of your choice. I am puzzled as to why that tool is so valuable, maybe because I think it could have been explained better in this chapter. Personally I would think that using an RSS would only clutter everything up and make things overwhelming. I am not opposed to teaching students about it, but I just don’t think that it will be a tool that will be useful to me. The one case when I would consider using it would be if my students were blogging, it would be perfect to be alerted when students posted new blogs. Using an RSS may also be useful when writing informational or research papers, but I wonder how much new information would be found. The chapter provided many tips for using an RSS and steps to take for specific applications, but I still find myself confused as what it really is and how it works. As far as the author using RSS for news updates, how is that useful when the news is constantly being updated? It would just keep adding more and more notifications to an aggregator. Then when reading the feeds its necessary to make “Pageflakes a part of your daily practice,” and what are pageflakes? The details described in the chapter made it hard for me to follow too. I’m sure if I had more experience with this tool, or a better explanation of what it is I would be more apt to use it.
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