RSS is dead, long live RSS!

I have included a module on RSS to allow my students to create their own research teams on topics of interest. Because I’m old, I still have my students set up Feedly accounts and plug in the RSS feeds of their classmates and hopefully add other blogs to their feeds as well. And like blogging, I realize only a handful will continue but I want to expose them to the power of sharing their own research/learning via blogging and how to find others who do as well via Feedly.

This term I received this bit of feedback:

 I think that Feedly and the RSS feed seem to be too much and becoming outdated. With current social media, I would most likely receive alerts when people/groups that I am following have updated posts.

Source: Flogging the Dead Horse of RSS – Ideas and Thoughts

I’ve mentioned RSS on here once or twice because I feel it’s one of the most powerful technologies available. It’s totally democratic, if you don’t like a site, don’t add it to your reader and you’ll never see it. Social media isn’t a replacement for RSS feeds. Social media is like gambling for information. Being on line at the right time may alert you to a jackpot of information, but if you miss it, it’s gone. Using RSS you don’t miss anything.

We’ve got to get beyond this belief that just because something is old doesn’t make it useful. The best online discussion forum I’ve ever used is Usenet News, a distributed network of articles that started 30 years ago.. It is now a shadow of it’s former self because no company can make money off of you for reading Usenet.

If you haven’t tried out RSS, check out Feedly. While it’s limited to 100 feeds in the free version, that’s more than enough to get you started. And once you sign up, be sure to add https://eduk8.me to your list of feeds!