Part I

Part II

Part III

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Why are blogs different than regular websites?

(or A Brief Introduction to Accessing Blogs through RSS) ParT III

 (<< Back to Part II)

Finally, if you want to see how RSS and RSS Readers can actually make a big difference to your information overload issues (and possibly to how you work with online classes) click on link at the bottom of the left-hand pane that reads "Ed Tech Blogs." 

What it loads in the right is the content for 48 blog sites dedicated to educational technology and elearning issues. While the contents on the right-hand side may at first seem daunting, consider what it would take to actively monitor and read the content of 48 websites through a web browser. Then consider that once you've gone through this the first time, what you're left with is only the sites that change, meaning there is no need to waste time visiting sites that have nothing new to say.

So just as a starting thought on how this might apply in an educational context - the idea of student journaling has some appeal in certain disciplines, but the prospect of reviewing all 20 or so journals at the end of an online course, or even daily, seems a bit daunting. As purely a matter of efficiency, would it not seem more appealing to be able to quickly scan a single list of 20 feeds produced by your students and only read the ones that have changed? On the other hand, what might some of the issues be in using this software, especially considering that it has not been built with educations' specific needs in mind?

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 Resources

Two extensive lists of available RSS Aggregators, many of them free or open source, see:

For another attempt at a gentle introduction to RSS for Educators try