CEDO35 Week Three - RSS Feeds and Education

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Our third week of Facilitating Collaboration Using Web 2.0 has us exploring how RSS  can be useful for gleaning information that we want to see.   Prior to RSS Feeds one had to go to blog and news sites to see if anything new had come along.  RSS feeds turn the flow around and new information comes to the user via an aggregator.  Just about every Web-site has the RSS symbol and with several clicks of a mouse you can start subscribing to new content from that site.

My first RSS feed was easy to deploy right into my blog.  Just look in the upper right corner and you will see the RSS feed coming over from my Posterous Photo Blog Site.   In my work with the Hoofer's Sailing Club I added RSS feeds to the Wiki just by copying and pasting the RSS URL from popular sailing and windsurfing sites. Instructors now see the latest Volvo Racing results populate into the Wiki along with other sailing news.

Real-time news updates are great for a site, but what about other information?  This week I have been subscribing to educational blogs and e-learning sites and I can read them at my leisure.  I use Google Reader for my aggregator and I just open it up and it provides a list of anything new that has been published from my subscribed sites.  I skim through the items and delve into them if I like or dismiss them as being read.  I enjoy this functionality as it is like reading a magazine with only the content I care to see.  A big plus is that I don't have to go to each site and wade through all the ads and surveys - allowing me to focus on the information.

Although I have been using Posterous for my Photo Blog, I created a Flickr account and uploaded some of my favorite photographs.  Unlike Posterous,  I now share my photos with a community of users who are free to view and comment on my pictures.  Plus, I added tags and descriptions to make it easier for others to find pictures. If you would like to take a look at my Flickr site click here.

There are a few of my photos that took a lot of work to get just right. I want to share my work with others but also receive credit.  I created a Creative Commons License which I will apply to a few of the pictures requiring attribution.  Hey, I would be happy if someone decides to use my images - but I do want to maintain control over what people can do with them.  I have a few nice close-ups of Bumblebees but I really don't want them used in an advertisement for, say, something like 'Bee-B-Gone' toxic bug spray.  It just wouldn't feel right - so I limit my work to non-commercial use and keep my humble Bumblebee pics safe from such a fate.