I'm going to come clean: I'm not the best organizer. So it was a blessing when I was forced to get my RSS-house in order over the last week. Years ago I used Google Reader a little, but not much. When it went away I switched to Feedly but never "got into it." Last week I returned to my Feedly account and discovered all of my Reader feeds were gone, so I started from scratch.
I'm so glad. I proclaim I'm a lifelong learner - and am - but often fall into sloppy habits of reading the easy stuff that plops into my lap via social feeds like G+ and little more. I've needed discipline to follow a system that would ensure I'm consistently seeing and reading more significant things relevant to my professional and learning interests. RSS is like deliberately planning and eating healthier instead of unthinkingly grabbing whatever yummy junk comes your way, day-to-day.
Hear are some ideas for using RSS in my own learning (which could also be applied for anyone interested in learning):
1. Twitter list RSS:
Many that I follow in ICT4E, as well as elsewhere, are more active and vocal on Twitter than anywhere else. Ryan Barret created a web-based app that provides Atom (RSS) feeds from Twitter (or Facebook) into an RSS reader. I find it helpful to use Twitter Lists to organize people and organizations by topic, so I organized my primary Twitter list into an RSS feed and now happily have all those tweets feeding into... well, Feedly.
What's really cool about that is since these tweets feed into my reader, I have one place to go to read meaningful content instead of multiple places. That's huge!
2. Google/news keyword alerts RSS:
Google keywords are another thing I've not used but have long felt I should be. I haven't because, again, I haven't been organized to consistently be checking them. At best they'd dump into my email, where they'd pester me and I quickly got into a habit of auto-deleting them.
Unfortunately, Google alerts using RSS are not presently working (Google says they do, but alas they don't). Fortunately, Google news alerts do work. Any news articles that feature a keyword set by the user can feed into a RSS reader. To set it up, simply use this format as the URL link you add to the RSS reader (where the red words are examples of whatever keywords you want): http://news.google.com/news?q=email+marketing&output=rss
With this set up, any news articles about topics I'm interested in are automatically delivered to my cyber doorstep. Another victory for using RSS to collect and read important content in one spot!
3.Google Scholar alerts:
The same can be done with Google Scholar alerts. Similar to setting up the Atom feed, it can be a bit tricky. There are instructions (and details about issues and bugs in the comments below it) here: http://www.robcoers.nl/create-rss-feed-google-scholar-seven-easy-steps/.
These ideas are beneficial to me as a learner, and would be ideal for any other learner, or student - inside the classroom or out.
