Week 4, Thing 8 & 9

I was oblivious to RSS before this lesson. I wonder why? I am an avid online reader of news sources and I never noticed that little logo in the corner. After this lesson I went back to the newspaper sites I use and, sure enough, there was the RSS logo.

I created my reader in Bloglines. The feature that appealed to me the most was being able to set up playlists that were customized. I'm still sloshing my way through using it, but I can see the wisdom of having all of my news sources in one handy location. As far as using it in an elementary school setting, I could see the value of setting up specific playlists that tied into a certain unit of study. But, like most of the internet, there would need to be definite adult supervision.

I did a little sleuthing using the various tools and found that the Google Blog search and Feedster were my favorites. I think one would have to limit their search time because you can certainly get carried away with the many avenues the searches open. I have already added several sites to my Blogline and will probably need to do more.