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Over the past two weeks I've developed a love/ hate relationship with RSS aggregator software tools. Excitement generated by my first download soon dissipated as I began to understand the nature of the beast. I began to experience information overload within hours of setting up my iGoogle and iTunes accounts! I decided it was time to do something about the situation after being inundated by a large number of RSS feeds (328 as of now). Most of the information I received corresponded to my interest in computers, educational technology, electronic music, and video production. Many of these feeds were quickly analyzed, evaluated, and saved for future reference. Irrelevant information was either ignored or discarded into a virtual trash bin. Confronted with an enormous information management problem I immediately decided to take corrective action. Each of the RSS subscriptions were evaluated in terms of their currency, credibility, reliability, and relevance to my interests. Subscriptions that failed to meet criterion-referenced standards were cancelled. By weeding out a lot of bogus information I was better able to manage my digital assets.
In retrospect I believe this assignment taught me several important lessons. Considering my inexperience using RSS and aggregator software, I felt this activity helped me understand how to locate subject-related information from multiple sources. Lessons learned from this experience could be adapted for use in almost any instructional setting. For example, I could adapt a chord finder/ music theory gadget for use in teaching someone how to play the guitar. Beginning and intermediate level students would really benefit from using music-related gadgets during their practice sessions. Hopefully I will be able to use RSS in the future as a means to achieve personal and professional learning objectives.
