bloglines

Many teachers use the Internet these days to access information. Most of our students look to us as experts when it comes to finding and providing them with relevant content, largely because they haven't yet acquired all of the strategies they need to critically read and synthesize the information that they are able to collect on their own. These are skills that need to be taught, not just with the use of technology, but in all subject areas. Although many of us are becoming more efficient at finding what we are looking for (lesson plans, student activities, blogs of interest, etc...), how many of us can really say that the time we spend surfing the 'net is always well-spent?

With our growing dependance on the Internet as source that provides us with a wealth of information, the concept of 'surfing the net' must be redefined. Now that the volume of accessible information has increased so significantly, the waves are getting a little too big for surfing - we're often thrown off course when we're surfing the net and sometimes it can take quite a while to get back on track! We follow irrelevant links from websites that we visit, and we spend too much time checking out our favourite websites for updates: educational blogs, friend's online photo galleries, even their Facebook accounts :-)

Rather than visiting these websites and blogs repeatedly, awaiting the latest breaking information, why not let the latest content or updates come to you? Rather than flirting with danger by surfing the massive breakers of the Internet, wouldn't you rather stroll along the shore and pick up some of the treasures that have washed up? The seashells, the shiny rocks, the sand dollars - these are the things that we really want, and we don't want to have to work so hard to get to them. This is exactly why I subscribe to RSS Feeds...

An RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Feed is an aggregator that automatically checks the websites that you subscribe to and notifies you when there have been updates. Often, when there have been updates (those treasures laying along the beach), you are able to view the updates instantly without having to wade through all of the other stuff to get to it. Although I use Bloglines, there are a number of websites and services that allow you to subscribe to your favourite websites.

At Bloglines, you can subscribe to the websites and the the blogs that you regularly visit. If there have been changes or updates, you'll know about them right away. Bloglines allows to to share some of your favourite links with friends and acquaintances at the click of a button. You can also search Bloglines for other articles or information that interest you.

In addition to all of these great features, Bloglines will even allow you to publish your own blog. Although this is a possibility at numerous websites, it is convenient to maintain your own blog at the same website where you get to catch up on all of the aspects of the internet that interest you...

Best of all, Bloglines is free :-) Within minutes, you'll be signed up with a unique username and password and you'll be well on your way to letting the Internet come to you!

To get started with your website subscriptions, all you do is add new feeds to your account. You enter in the website address, it will validate your feed, and automatically it will begin monitoring that website address to notify you of updates. You can add new feeds and delete feeds whenever you choose.

You can also import and export your subscriptions. If you wanted to share all of your subscribed sites with another user, with another computer, or even another Bloglines account, you can!

With Bloglines, all of the updates are previewed right at this website. All you see is a headline with the title/topic of the update and the first couple of sentences of the article or blog post. The entire post can be viewed if a topic or update interests you and, if not, the update will be marked as read as soon as you click on another one of your feeds.

While your subscriptions can keep you up-to-date with the information you want from the internet, subscribing to other recommended websites might also provide you with some very worthwhile information. For example, this article about pollution caught my attention from a National Geographic News feed. While I found the content of this article to be interesting, it could be an excellent way to generate discussion in the classroom. Whether I'm working with a Grade 4 Science class or a Grade 8 Social Studies class, the topic of this article applies directly to several of the outcomes from the curriculum that I am teaching my students.

Staying caught up with current events will help to ensure that what you are teaching your students is interesting and relevent. By bringing these interesting little tidbits of information directly to you and sharing them with your students, you can help them to see more ways that they can also use the internet in a more meaningful way :-)

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