Monday, June 23, 2008

Thing #8 - RSS Feeds and Readers

This was interesting, but a bit frustrating because there were just so many things to choose from for which to subscribe. I spent a great deal of time putting in various key words to see what other options would come up and found more than anyone could possibly ever read. I know I missed some really good ones, but I did finally settle on some to subscribe to for this project.

Now, to answer the project questions...

What I liked was the fact that I could see all of my choices at a glance instead of having to go from site to site. The brief descriptions helped me choose whether I wanted to go ahead and read the full "thing" or move on to another. This allowed me to maximize my reading time.

I could see me using this professionally by blogging with others in the field of education to discuss various topics, share discovered sites, ask for suggestions on whatever I'm struggling with at the time, etc.

Not being a librarian, I'm not sure that I'm qualified to answer how libraries could use this technology, but here goes...I think it would be great if it was used as a way to share education/technology issues and sites with teachers. It would be a way for a librarian to give teachers information without having to have a face-to-face meeting. That way, the librarian would be saving teachers from looking and looking for information that the librarian may have already gathered. I know that our school librarian sometimes finds it frustrating that she can't meet with our grade level team because of all the other meetings we already have. Maybe by creating a shared Reader we could eliminate some of that frustration and save time. However, I know that she would have to spend time teaching our teams how to access the reader, etc. so I'm not sure how much of a time saver it would be for her.

No comments: