Really Simple Syndication

The world of education is all about inquiry these days, and I have to admit that I am not a fan of the word. I prefer to teach using a balance of many styles, and in my opinion, inquiry should just be a natural part of the day, not something I need to incorporate specifically into lessons. Inquiry should come naturally through curiosity and a desire to learn.

I used that curiosity this week to take on another step in my Inquiry Project. I proposed that I would investigate how the use of Google reader would benefit my professional and personal life. It seems as though with the extensive amount of websites and information available on the internet, the new pattern is to find a way to simplify how we collect and read that information. Out of that need has come the reader, aggregator, or feed collector tool. In his book, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom," Will Richardson describes the basic function of a reader, "The aggregator checks the feeds you subscribe to, usually every hour, and it collects all the new content from those sites you are subscribed to. Then, when you are ready, you open up your aggregator to read the individual stories, file them for later use, click through to the site itself, or delete them if they're not relevant. In other words, you check one site instead of thirty." (p. 72)

In other words, a person can create their own online magazine and constantly choose what the content of the magazine is, when to read it, and get rid of articles which are not useful. I have never been one to use a reader because I still love clicking on my bookmarks and going to individual websites. There is just something satisfying about that process. Now that I am focused more on following a variety of educational blogs, I am becoming much more aware of the usefulness of a reader tool. When I first signed up for Google Reader, it just seemed unnecessary. After subscribing to a number of blogs and RSS feeds, Google Reader is suddenly a tool that I can understand. As with all Web 2.0 tools, there usefulness become defined by how much we want to delve into them. Richardson also states that ,"RSS is a technology that will change your life, if you let it." (2009, p.72) Since taking the time to investigate this tool further, I have added to my collection of professional resources which I have been able to add to my Livebinder site, and I have been able to keep up on the world of professional cycling which is a personal passion I have, all without leaving the house.

So where does inquiry fit into this post? For the past few years, I have seen RSS and the RSS symbol on all sorts of websites.

Because I have never thought I had a reason to use RSS, I therefore never bother to look up what those letters stand for. I made assumptions they stood for some fancy internet words, and I even made assumptions about what would happen if I hit the link. I never did it though. Now that I am investigating the use of this tool I finally looked up what RSS stand for, and was slightly surprised to see that is means "Really Simple Syndication." And there was my inquiry in action. I had a curiosity, I looked up the answer, and it led me down more paths to investigate this new world of readers.

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.