Using RSS Feeds in the Classroom

If you use blogs with your students, the uses of RSS will make your life much easier. Instead of

checking out all 15-20 or even more individual student blogs every day, you collect their work

in your aggregator using their RSS feeds. That way, you can scan through all of the class content

in one place and read a particular post to comment on it.

RSS feeds are particularly helpful in aiding research projects. Students can create accounts in an

aggregator to localize feeds for information about a topic. A student who is doing a project on

global warming could create an RSS feed that would bring any news about global warming to the

aggregator as soon as it was published. Or you can stay up-to-date on blogs that focus on

teaching your subject or teaching with technology . You--or your students--could find blogs that

chronicle first-person accounts of life in an area in the news--Israel, Darfur, South Africa, Iraq,

etc. RSS feeds allow you to mine this information for “educational nuggets” to share with your

classes.

Resources

A Student-created Guide to RSS

RSS Ideas for Educators