I cannot tell a lie...I'm addicted to RSS feeds.  I could never figure out what they were before, but now that I know how they work, why wouldn't anyone use one?  There's just one small problem.  Because I subscribe to news that interests me, it ALL interests me.  When I scroll through the stories, I have to check them all out, and I frequently end up starring multiple stories to return to a later time.

I'm really going to have to come up with a great tagging and organizing system.

As Richardson suggested, I chose Google Reader as my "aggregator" (new exciting word that to me means place where my millions of news stories come to land).  After I mucked my way through setting up Reader and subscribing, I thought I'd search for a video that would have been useful before all my hard work.  Of course I found one (see below).  It puts Reader's use into simple terms.



I understand Richardson's explanation about how useful RSS feeds would be in a classroom, but I cannot yet figure out how to use them effectively in the elementary classroom.  All the articles I found (Using RSS feeds in the Classroom, RSS Feeds and Using them in the Classroom) and the book mention having students use specific feeds for their research papers or using RSS feeds to keep track of my students' blogs.  At the elementary level, these applications don't seem practical.

The one thing that did seem like a good idea was using TeacherVision.com's RSS Feeds to bring fresh daily content to my classroom.  My students are benefiting from the RSS feeds, but they are still not using them actively.  I think that they'll do okay waiting to use feeds until they're a little older.