It's February, and it's cold

So I decided to curl up with my laptop in front of the fire and catch up on my RSS feeds. And then I realized that I had this amazing resource at my fingertips and that a lot of the people I know don't know what an RSS feed is or does. So I thought I'd share.

Here goes. I like to stay current with ideas in a lot of areas. And, like most people, I don't have time to weed through vast amounts of information trying to figure out what's going on. So I rely on RSS feeds. Let me give you some examples: I subscribe to the New York Times Technology feed. Every time I go to the feed I can see titles and links to NYT articles about technology. I also subscribe to a few blogs in which experts in instructional technology summarize the latest and greatest new tools and techniques. I don't have to look for this information, it gets sent to me every day.

Don't get me wrong--I don't look at my RSS feeds every day. If I did, I'd never get anything else done. But today, before I started writing this, I learned that the Internet is being nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize; that instead of merely recycling office paper, I can buy a machine that will turn it into toilet paper; and that a new Coventry University study has found that text messaging actually helped children develop "phonological awareness," important in helping children learn how to spell.

If you want to learn more about RSS feeds, how to find them, how to subscribe to them, and how to use them for yourself or for a course, please send email to OIRT and we'll get you started.