RSS in Education

This weeks assignment was to learn about what RSS is and how to use it in education.  RSS is simply known as Really Simple Syndication. Most websites that have frequent updates or entries have an RSS feed. These feeds can be accessed through RSS readers, for instance, Feedly.  Which I have a video tutorial below on how Feedly can be used.  

I have recently found out that using Feedly or other RSS readers can be very beneficial in the educational field. It's nice to be able to search a topic and find what seems to be limitless blogs, news articles, scholarly journals, FAQ's forums, etc. The school district I work for has recently solved an issue that occurred when we updated to Office 365 that for some reason made the Autodesk softwares to suddenly stop working. By using Feedly I was able to see an article that identified the problem and gave a solution. This took about 15 minutes compared to what could be hours of talking on the phone to a technician or filtering through information on their own website. RSS readers allow you to set up filters to where you only see the information that you deem interesting.

I showed my high school Principles of Engineering class Feedly and the Feedly app last week. This week they came back excited. They where able to use the app to research topics in the History classes, along with improve their writings using blogs over writing for English. For me, I'm still attempting to find a way to have the discussion forum from Canvas to be picked up in Feedly so that the students can run the discussions from their devices and see what others students are asking about or struggling with. I can see the benefit of RSS in education with the help of researching topics, keeping discussions alive, and developing onto the student's technological skills.