Uses+of+RSS+and+Social+Bookmarking+for+Educators

Managing Web Informatio​n
 According to a recent study, the amount of digital information, the so-called "digital universe", is doubling every 18 months. More and more users are joining and interacting socially via the web and creating information at an unprecedented rate. As educators we can take advantage of this digital universe to improve the learning experience for our students and ourselves. However it is easy to become "road kill on the information super-highway" if we don't wisely manage our access to the "digital universe". The flood of digitized knowledge could easily overwhelm the unprepared. Two tools for making the management of this ever-growing mountain of information are RSS feeds and the Social Bookmarking phenomena. By subscribing to RSS feeds from websites we are interested in we can keep abreast of changes in areas of interest. By sharing web resources we have found, we enrich the digital universe and in turn enjoy a "multiplier effect" for access to information relevant to out teaching interests.

Uses of RSS feeds

 * An overview of RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

>>  A list of RSS feeds from Education Week from their blogs, publications, and online discussions.
 * Uses For RSS Feeds in Education
 * This site provides information on many different uses of RSS feeds in the classroom (two examples from this page follow):
 * One example for educators is to use RSS feeds to keep track of students blogs. By signing up for the RSS feeds teacher can access student blogs without having to go to each students site and check for their latest posts.
 * One example for students is to use RSS feeds to help study. There are many online sites dedicated to helping students study and many of them will send out daily questions through RSS.
 * Uses for RSS Feeds for Administrators in Education
 * This sites provides information for administrative uses of RSS feeds. For example:
 * Administrators can use RSS feeds to communicate with parents or the community.
 * Provide teacher and staff with information
 * Professional Development

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One of the less than useful characteristics of the internet is the highly disorganized nature of the information contained there. Finding the information you need may often be more a matter of luck rather than your skill in retrieving it. Using a social bookmarking service, such as del.icio.us, furl or diig can make your bookmarks, as a sort of user interface, more manageable, personalized and able to be shared cooperatively. Student's who are using different computers at school from class to class can maintain a consistent resource easily. Teachers can recommend tags to students as a guide for research in specific topics. By editing the tags of resources with [|high quality notes], each member of the learning community can add "value" to the resource being shared. The following links provide an introduction to social bookmarking and some resources for educators. ======  list ==Click Here to Find More Examples of Classroom Applications ==
 * An overview of Social Bookmarking.
 * Social Bookmarking for Educators
 * Some popular sites to help with your social bookmarking needs**
 * BuddyMarks -The online personal, group and social bookmarks manager
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Brainify - Higher Education
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Del.icio.us<span class="wiki_link_ext"> - One of the most user friendly bookmarking sites
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Diigo<span class="wiki_link_ext">- Powerful research tool and knowledge-sharing community
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">CiteULike - Free service for managing and discovering scholarly references
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Edutagger - Service for K-12 learners and educators, allowing you to store your web links online and share them with others, all within an educational context.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Mister-Wong <span class="wiki_link_ext">- Social Bookmarking site with 6 languages and over 7 million monthly users globally.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Scholar - Blackboard-integrated social bookmarking
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Simpy <span class="wiki_link_ext">-Service that lets you save, tag, search and share your bookmarks, notes, groups and more
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Only Wire 3.0<span class="wiki_link_ext">- A service that lets you spread your content to multiple social sites from one place with the touch of one button
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Zotero - A free, easy-to-use **Firefox extension** to help you **collect, manage, and cite** your research sources.

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