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Web 2.0 in Learning - Part 1: RSS
By Kevin Jones | July 12, 2007
RSS - Blogs - Wikis - Tags - Social Software - Oh My! All these new words and technology are floating everywhere. Should we care about them? Can they help us or are they hype?
- Blogs - aren’t these just glamorized journals?
- Wikis - who went to Hawaii?
- Tags - who’s it?
- Social Software - maybe for my teenager, but not me!
This is the first in a series where I will try to explain, with plainness and WIIFM, if the buzzword is even relevant to learning and, if it is, how.
RSS is a ‘backronym‘ for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Even though the word ’simple’ is in there somewhere, trying to decipher what it means is not simple. Here is the history:When the web first came out many of us adopted the habit of checking our favorite sites every day for the latest and greatest information. We were ‘pulling’ the information to us. With RSS we can now have it ‘pushed’ to us to one central place.For example, anyone can easily set up a central repository - be it on a web page, a small program on the computer or through a simple, low key popup much like an Outlook email popup - where information I choose can be sent to me. I don’t need to go looking for it. When I find some information I want, I go through a simple process that let’s me ’subscribe’ to the content. It is then sent to me if there is something new or if something changes. Much like the news paper comes to me each morning, except I get to choose what I want in it.For a great example, see this video.
How can we use this in learning? Let’s say that I want information every time a certain process is updated, or a new policy is implemented, or the president wants the employees to know something, or a new product is launched and I want the full information behind it. Is this valuable? You bet! Is this learning? You bet squared. In fact, the learning that I do with this information is personalized to my needs.
The great thing about this one is that it will take VERY little resources to get going. Compare that to the amount of learning each employee now has quick access to and you have a fabulous way to dramatically increase the amount of useful knowledge being consumed. Try it. You can set up an RSS ‘feed’ to you. Get a Google Reader account or sign up and download FeedReader. Then subscribe to this blog by clicking on ‘Entries RSS’ on the lower right.
If you have any questions on this, please see this post or comment and I will respond.
Other posts on similar topics- Why #2 - Personalizing Learning
- Social Learning Webinar: A Case Study from eBay
- Podcascadia- How the podcast is created
- Learning from an impromptu online community
- Webinar #2 - Using Wikis in Social Learning
Topics: - Social Learning SIG |
July 12th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Kevin,
Nice synopsis of the technology. When I teach RSS in the eLearning context, I also hit on another significant feature of the publish-and-subscribe technology — butts in seats.
That is, as companies big and small try to establish web learning portals which can attract and retain employee visitors, having some dynamic content which is topical and relevant will increase repeat visitation.
But how to do that without the maintenance nightmare of having to manually update the info every day — or every hour? Poof! RSS!
By throwing some code onto a web site and adding some RSS feeds, an eLearning group can add that content, cherry-picked from some known-good sources (like BlogCascadia, for instance), and it’s virtually hands-off.
Now, without fail, some concerned soul in the class wonders about the ability to intervene in the automated process if some inappropriate posting gets syndicated over to their site, and there are, of course, systems which can be put in place to do moderation of the postings.
But as you point out, it’s amazingly easy now to make customized, topical, consolidated, and current information come to you regularly. Viva la RSS!
July 12th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Great point, Aaron. In addition to cherry-picking information (which in school it might have been called cheating, but here it is called collaboration or sharing and is encouraged), the company can put out information at its normal pace and others within the company can contribute. As more and more contribute, the more dynamic content you have.
Your comment made me think about an article I recently read in the latest issue of CLO Magazine (clomedia.com). The VP & CLO at Capital One wrote an article entitled, “Learning Portals: Supporting Corporate Objective.” There were a number of points I agreed with, and others I didn’t agree with. But one that I remember is their best practice of frequent updates. Unless I misinterpreted their point incorrectly, they feel that content needs to be created constantly: “Always make certain there is fresh information to access.” And it sounded like it needs to be someone’s responsibility to ensure the creation of that content for the portal.
But if they cherry-pick and allow others to create and collaborate, you are correct, then content is almost always updated and the maintenance is dramatically reduced.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:11 am
No, it sounds to me like you misinterpreted their point correctly, Kevin!
Agreed that constant updating of content is both crucial — and so often overlooked when designing and developing learning (whether f2f or eLearning). Anytime I can let others help with the heavy lifting on that — anytime I can institutionalize laziness and get away with it — I’m a happy guy.
This raises another point about the pros and cons of using a broader community to create and update your content…but I’ll save that until your series progresses to wikis. Thanks for tackling these tech explainers!
September 26th, 2007 at 7:27 am
[...] this context, it is called RSS. I have written about this before on this BlogCascadia post. The best explanation, if you don’t know what it is (and even if you do) is found in this [...]
September 26th, 2007 at 7:29 am
[...] this context, it is called RSS. I have written about this before on this BlogCascadia post. The best explanation, if you don’t know what it is (and even if you do) is found in this [...]