Thing #8- RSS

I have been wondering for the longest how RSS worked and now I finally do! Should I be the "gatekeeper of knowlege" or the "tour guide" pointing out all the fabulous things along the way? Now my evil twin has the keys hidden, but guess what, the door is open so who needs the keys anyway? LOL. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndicaton". What it does is it keeps you updated with information that YOU want. Using a reader such as Google Reader, you can select what information you want updates on. You can receive the lastest blog entry from Neil Gaiman or keep up with the latest celebrity info by following Entertainment Weekly updates. The subscriptions that you choose are sent to your reader homepage.
There are so many different ways that a teacher/librarian could use this technology at school. By following fellow librarians and "those in the know" you are able to be on the cutting edge and not left in the dark ages. There was an instant earlier this year when I was following Critical Thinking on Twitter and the CEO announced that they were having a 99cent-$1.99 sale on many of their gifted and talented products. They were giving their Twitter followers an advantage by posting it 12 hours before it was open to the public. I purchased 13 books for less than $25 (shipping and handling included). Yes, membership has its priviledges.
If students were studying a specific current event, the teacher could have a RSS feed that only picks ups that topic and when new information is posted, voila! And the teacher and students save time by not searching the Internet everyday for new information. What a fabulous tool!