Thing 9. More on RSS.

I did a lot of looking around at RSS without much to show for it. I checked out Google Reader but chose Bloglines to set up an account in. I found Bloglines's search tool the easiest to use in finding feeds. Examples: I put in the search term, "interest rates" and chose a feed from among many (NYT Interest Rates), then did another search, "School Library Journal" and got SLJ Breaking News. Easy! I have added both to my feeds on Bloglines for my real-life needs as I mentioned in my last post. 

I looked at most on the list of recommended links on the assignment page. Comments on a few: I found BlogPulse a waste of time. Why? When I put in "School Library Learning 2.0" as my search term, I got recent stuff on religion in Sci Fi (by a fundamentalist blogger named Jeff the Baptist, from Delaware). Earlier stuff on the thread was more on-topic, but my time just isn't worth this! I did the same search ("School Library Learning 2.0") in Google Reader and had fun reading hits. I felt much more linked to the bloggers. I found Syndic8 wild and woolly. Mustn't forget Suprglu. Really fun. Librarians you'd actually want to hang with outside of work.

Thing 8: RSS

RSS = Really simple, stupid. Just kidding. April Fool's!

Once I learned about RSS and how it works, I started to realize that RSS is all around and I have never known how it works or taken advantage of it. An example is my homepage on my browser, Yahoo, which features the headlines from several major newspapers that I selected eons ago when I set up the page. In fact, it can be seen among these feed icons (a little eye candy to entice the reader).

When I realized that RSS allows one to get the headlines without the irksome "noise" of advertising that I see on my homepage, I was overjoyed. I find the visual interruption, the distraction of ads really derails my reading and ability to focus on important information. This is a concern at my school, which is for kids grades 1-8 with language learning challenges, and dyslexia in particular. Working with kids who have special learning needs has made me much more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of my own learning abilities.

My responses to some prompts (in bold) from the assignment page:

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school life? Book review blogs would inform my collection purchases in a new way. SLJ would be a good one--they must use RSS (I've probably seen it advertised in SLJ print version). I found 3 blogs that I added to my feeds: Librarians' Internet Index, Library Web Chic, and The Shifted Librarian, 2 of which were on Bloglines's Top 1000 list. Way to go librarians!

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your personal life?

Maybe I could keep an eye on interest rates so we time the application just right for a loan that we want to take out to do a major home renovation.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology? Definitely keeping up with tech developments for libraries and have an impact on the profession.

If you are still reading this, I just found the comment (for the third time, as I've gone over and over the assignment, making sure I've done everything) at the bottom of the assignment page: "Why have a public account? To share blog rolls with others, of course. That's how we keep track of School Library Learning 2.0 participants." And for the third time I've said, "Wow. That's how they read our stuff. Very cool." So thank you for pointing it out and modeling the technology--another great app for RSS!