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RSS and Academics

RSS and Academics
By Sharon Housley

Academia has embraced RSS as a means to educate, but scrutinizing how educational institutions are using RSS feeds in their daily routines show RSS is utilized can vary across different industries.

1. Share Resources
Academics are using social bookmarking websites to share quality websites that relate to their area of expertise with colleagues and students.

Examples of Shared Resources:
Delicious - http://del.icio.us social bookmarking system, can be setup to use as shared bookmarks, RSS feeds are available CiteULike - http://www.citeulike.org share resources

2. Class Blogs
From elementary schools to university blogs, online journals have flourished. Instructors have used blogging as a teaching tool. Helping students learn writing and reporting skills while understanding how to use technology. Many educational bloggers use RSS as a means to syndicate blog posts.

3. School Schedule Sports Schedule
RSS feeds can be used to communicate events scheduled on or off campus to prospective and existing students. Subscribes of a schools calendar feed receive notification as new items are added to the calendar.

4. Podcast Lectures
Podcasts can be used as study guides or even as class preview for students contemplating their course selections or choice of professors.

5. Monitor Research
Students involved in cutting edge research projects can use RSS to monitor news and search engines for specific keywords (like nanotechnology or coldfusion) by creating search feeds. Any time a mention of the keyword phrase occurs in a news piece the item will appear in the search feed.

6. Professional Development
RSS can be used for remote education. Teachers can lose less class time while still staying current on the latest techniques, trends and information in their field of expertise.

7. Job Searches
Professors and teachers can create job search feeds. The RSS feed will update each time a position that meets their criteria becomes available.

8. Collaboration (writely/wiki)
Universities in particular actively participate in collaborative projects and research. New tools have never made collaboration easier. RSS can be used in conjunction with many of the online collaboration tools to notify other contributors of changes.

9. Search Feeds
Students writing papers or working on research papers on specific topics can create search feeds, so that each time that topic is mentioned they receive notification in their custom search feed.

10. Study Guides
Many websites that are focussed on studying. Have created RSS feeds that contain daily questions. There are feeds for "word of the day" or "problem of the day". Students can subscribe to the feed and integrate long term studying into their daily routines.

11. Medical Education
A study recently showed medial students who listened to heart murmurs on an ipod, were more likely to accurately diagnose heart murmurs accurately in patients. Some medical schools have begun adopting podcasts as a means to educate.

12. Scholarships
Students can monitor high school and college scholarship opportunities using RSS feeds.

13. Grants
Academic researchers can monitor funding and grant opportunities using RSS feeds.

14. School News
Schools big or small can use RSS to communicate school news with their population, announcing staff changes, new courses or any other news that is relevant and of interest to the student population.

15. Student Financial Aid News
Students and parents can listen to podcasts that assist with financial aid, student loans and financial podcasts that tackle difficult topics like how to make college more affordable.

Locate Educational Feeds and Podcasts - http://www.educational-feeds.com

RSS is well suited for the world of academia and educators have embraced it as a medium. Technology and communication for years have helped advance the educational field for years. RSS feeds and Podcasting is a natural fit for academics, and its obvious when we look at how teachers, students and professors are using it to further education.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

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