RSS

What are RSS feeds and why can they be such a useful technological tool for a wide variety of students and educators? RSS stands for 'really simple syndication' and that is exactly what it is. By incorporating these feeds enables users to constantly update and be updated with a websites changing content and therefore allows subscribers and followers to become aware of these changes while still remaining time efficient.

With education slowly incorporating technological systems such as this allows for many learning opportunities for students within as well as out of the classroom. Learning Managers could introduce one RSS feed where students can access information on numerous aspects of their learning such as homework activities or information on upcoming assessments. Learning Managers may also ask students to create their own educational blogs to present learnings similar to our assessments for Managing E-Learning in which students would utilise RSS feeds. another positive aspect of RSS feeds could allow parents to access important information regarding school events, newsletters, forms and goings-on etc from home. Mind you, this would save a lot of trees from being cut down!

The following website below utilises this technology in such an exciting and new way! Also, on this particular journey I became aware of yet another e-learning technology which is evidently being incorporated into learnings is the 'podcast'.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDownsFm

'A podcast is rich media, such as audio or video, distributed via RSS. Feeds like this one provide updates whenever there is new content. FeedBurner makes it easy to receive content updates in popular podcatchers'. The podcasts allow you to listen to students resiting poetry, composing music and participating in a pantomime. This would no doubt be an effective online learning tool.