I’m a admittedly a huge RSS fan. I use my newsreader, Google Reader (and Reeder on my iPhone), on a daily basis to pore over hundreds of news items, blog posts, YouTube recommendations, and student work. I find that it keeps me in the know without taking up too much of my time. It also makes it easy for me to find topics to blog about and pass along to friends and colleagues.
It has always bewildered me that so few of the folks that I work with make use of this technology. New teachers, fresh from education programs, have often heard about RSS but don’t see the benefit for them. Veteran teachers, even those who consider themselves techies, frequently think of it as “something extra” that they don’t have time for.
I also use Facebook actively, but only on a personal basis. I almost never interact with colleagues or companies/brands that I like through Facebook. Lately, however, I’ve noticed more and more that organizations are creating Facebook pages to allow users to “follow” their updates and news. While this isn’t something that I enjoy doing, it seems to be becoming more and more popular.
Which leads me to the question: Will Facebook’s increasingly aptly named News Feed surplant RSS as the mode of choice for consumers (of products and information) to stay up-to-date? Will Facebook mean the end of RSS?
What do you think?
Like many in my PLN, I lusted over Google Wave invites for weeks and finally received one of my own. Unlike some, however, I have begun to see the great potential that this tool has to bring positive change into my classroom. I have seen its drawbacks and missing features and I am ignoring them (for now). Instead I am focused on the ways in which this tool (a “multimodal wiki” in the words of