I’m sitting in my office today, writing code, trying to create an update of Rubric Builder before I move Landmarks for Schools over to the new web server. It’s occurred to me that this is a Web 2.0 application, a very old one. Teachers come in and add their rubrics. Other teachers can find their rubrics and adapt them to their own uses. It’s collaborative content building.
Anyway, that’s not why I’m writing this. A nice thing about programming is that I can do it and listen to podcasts at the same time (unlike writing). So I’m listening to this podcast where someone is trying to define what RSS is, and not doing a very good job of it. It’s no wonder why people remain confused by what is essentially a very simple concept.
Then it occurred to me, and tell me if I’m getting this wrong, that more than anything else, RSS is a table of contents. Well, to be precise, its the aggregator that is the table of contents. The difference is that a traditional TOC describes the contents of a static document. An aggregator describes the contents of a document that is growing, i.e., my blog or my bookmarks. As I add this entry to my blog, my table of contents grows, and, thanks to RSS, it shows up on the computers of my readers around the world — all 17 of them.
Does this make any sense, or am I just looking for excuses to get away from my programming.
2¢ Worth!
Why not just use a mailbox (aggregator), magazine subscription (content from wiki, blog, social bookmark site, or Flickr), and a mailcarrier (RSS) to provide a context. That has always worked for me, and people get it right away.
Here is a link to a supporting page to a staff development session we are using to try to get the word out to our district staff on RSS.
http://misc.lps.org/misc/post/detail.cfm?id=310
I like David Jakes analogy – that works well for me and actually helps me get it – even after using Bloglines for the first time this summer I wasn’t sure how to explain it to others. Incidentally, I just found out about something called PageFlakes (http://www.pageflakes.com) on which you can save your RSS feeds in addition to things like a Google search box, a task list, a notes box and many others. These pages can be shared with others making it a great collaborative tool. Besides a main page, I’ve created a separate page devoted to a project I’m working on with someone and on it will be a task lisk, notes box and a link to a del.icio.us account I set up specifically for this project. Also found Diigo which allows social annotation of websites. These two tools alone, for me, really change the concept of how a research project can be done in a classroom.
I can never tell if you are being serious or sarcastic when you comment about the number of readers of your blog. If you are being serious, where does the 17 number come from? On Bloglines it says you have 28 subscribers. And who knows how many people are using other aggregators. (I have been using Flock.) So, is there a way to truly find out how many subscribers a blog has? (I am only about 6 months old when it comes to Web 2.0, so forgive my ignorance on this matter. Like most “newborns”, I am very curious!)
I think any definition where the word aggregator is used, we are in trouble. Every time I say that word to an audience, it is like looking back at a Deer staring into headlights. To me, RSS is like a math equation. You will pull your hair out until you “Get it†then you will spend the rest of your life wondering what took so long to figure it out.
While I don’t have a better way to explain it, I will agree that we need to find a solid way to explain it to the non-technical world.
The site Chad listed has some wonderful information on it.
Shawn
Re: Pam’s comment – hahahha, I agree because 17 is a good day for my blog, even if 15 of those visits are less than 5 seconds and one of them is my own ISP…. who’s the other person???!!!
Re: RSS
Table of *new* contents
Inbox of new stuff
Update subscriptions (cf. periodical subscriptions… where you used to get a newspaper/magazine every day/month, only now you get the articles/updates/any creation as they are being created and published…)
…
Notifier of changes on stuff you care about
Why is RSS a hard concept? Is it because people aren’t used to content being changed so rapidly and receiving information from so many sources?
Actually, now I worry that I actually don’t understand what it is afterall…
I checked out some start pages in the past months and there are many good services available. My personal favorites are Pageflakes and Netvibes. At the moment I prefer Pageflakes because it offers you a feature to share your pages with friends and colleagues. I think that’s a very useful and powerful feature and adds a whole new dimension to collaborative work. Of course, I also use the pages for my private needs (you can setup as many private, shared or public pages as you want). Check it out at http://www.pageflakes.com
Best regards
Stephen
I’m also posting this as a blog entry!
Wow! It seems like almost all of my 17 readers are responding to this one (problem is that when I’m being serious, people think I’m joking, and when I’m joking, people think I’m being serious.) I agree with Cherrie, that RSS is a simple concept, especially when, as Shawn says, we don’t use words like aggregator.
I suspect that we won’t be able to delete that word though, any more than we’ll be able to change what a podcast is called. But, back to Cherrie, I suspect that she is right. It’s new. It’s technology, which doesn’t help, but dynamic (living) content is a little frightening to folks, especially educators who need firm foundations upon which to stand — gravity and all (see Flat Classrooms). Dynamic (digital networked) information really changes a lot of things, not to mention the our very notions of literacy.
The approach I’ve been taking is trying to convince educators how important dynamic information is in a time of rapid change. When we are asking brand new questions and solving brand new problems, the answers will frequently come out of the conversations of dynamic information.
Anyway, back to the task at hand, I really like Dave Jakes approach of likening RSS to magazine subscriptions. I’ve seen him very eloquently present this at conferences and it plugs in especially well since the term is frequently used within the context of RSS.
Still, subscribing refers to the process. I guess my mind, yesterday, lighted on that aggregator — what you’re looking at after you’ve subscribed. This is where the Table of Contents comes in. It is an old convention that everyone is familiar with. It is a primary means of finding information in a book, and it is, exactly, what your subscribed feeds are, when you see them through your aggregator.
The aggregator itself can really be a lot of things. It can be considered your digital library (within which you have dynamic books with tables of contents). Some people think of it as a browser, integrating it into their use of Safari or Firefox. I use Netvibes, which looks very much like a digital newspaper. But when I look at an individual subscription or feed, I see a table of contents of that source of information, giving me logical access to its conversation.
David Warlick has a few more than 17 readers…more like 17,000.
I simply love RSS and the power it offers.
In regards to teachers getting on board though, its just going to take time and patience.
Heck, I heard your same seminar 5 or 6 times before I finally got it……..and I thought I was a fast learner! (smiles
Thanks for all you continually do
and good luck on the server switch over. Hope it goes smooth.
Jenw
Hahahahah, how jealous am I. Do you reckon specialist blogs get more readers than generel ho-hum blogs like mine? Damn, I’m too young to have a specialist blog! Haha.