Author: grabe

I have advocated that educators explore RSS for years so another post on the topic probably will surprise no one. Let me try a little different approach from what you may have heard from me before. This is a great time to think about the content you consume and how this content is influencing you. Now is the time to take at least partial control of this content. Nothing wrong with picking up an occasional tidbit from Facebook or Twitter, but you have to wade through a lot of nonsense to get to the gems if you rely on social media for discovery.

The use of RSS and an RSS reader allows you to follow multiple content sources in an efficient way. The RSS reader checks on the sites you designate and returns a list of new content that has been added to those sites since you last used the reader. It provides a list of additions that provide the title of new posts and a snippet of content from each. You can scan through this list quickly and make the decision to visit the site providing the content or ignore the new information that does not seem interesting from the title and snippet. The reader keeps track of what you have scanned and will not show items from the list the next time you visit unless you specify a given item as unread.

As a quick example, I use an RSS service called Feedly. I took a quick screen grab of the feed to show what the list of titles and snippets of content looks like. Again, clicking on any entry from the list takes you to the site providing this content.

Rather than explaining RSS and offering tutorials on RSS readers again, I thought it would be most efficient to offer annotated links to related content I have written in the last few years.

An introduction to RSS and RSS readers

Search vs. discovery – this is a way to understand the benefits of RSS as an addition to the searches you might generate.

Feedly – a description of the reader I use – (Feedly generates the feed shown above)

Feeder.CO – an RSS feed that is a browser extension

Google alerts – this is not RSS, but is a way to ask Google to constantly perform a search on a topic you designate and send you the results

FreshRSS – this is a geeky thing you probably will not employ yourself. It is a reader I have installed on the server I operate. I provide this link because you can use the list of sources I follow if you want to seed a reader of your own (such as Feedly) with educationally relevant sites.

Here is something you might find useful. It is possible to get an RSS feed from an RSS reader. So, you can get the feed from FreshRSS to review in your own feed reader. I hope this makes sense.

If you visit FreshRSS, you will find the symbol for the RSS feed from the feed reader at the top of the display. Clicking this icon will generate something that looks like this – https://learningaloud.com/FreshRSS/p/i/?a=rss&hours=168 . This URL can be then entered into a feedreader of your own. You might also just try entering the address for the site – https://learningaloud.com/FreshRSS in a reader of your own. One entry or the other should generate in your reader the results of the content discovered by my reader.

As more and more educators spend their time communicating using Zoom video, reports are surfacing warning of the vulnerabilities in Zoom (e.g., story from the Guardian). Zoom has been the “go to” service for the online courses I have taught in the last couple of years and the product our family now uses for group gatherings. I don’t think in all of these hours of use I have experienced the “Zoom bombing” problem. I can see this issue as resulting in inappropriate experiences in K12 settings. I guess I would probably not be aware of the other security issues that seem possible.

ArsTechnica offers a nice post on security suggestions for educators and their students that is worth a read. I admit I have not been using some of these suggestions (e.g., using a password for the meeting), but other suggestions were applied as a function of my normal instructional practice (e.g., the link for the Zoom meeting was sent to students using the Announcement feature in Blackboard before each meeting).

Exploring the settings that improve security can be a bit difficult to locate. Here is how I find them and I think the process may be different now for those using Zoom as a registered education service. See if this works for you. I am working from a computer and find the preference settings at the traditional location after launching a program. Use “more settings” to locate the settings described in the ArsTechnica article.

Under “General” locate more settings.

Social bookmarking may be a novel phrase to you. I use the phrase to describe any method for a group to organize and share bookmarks (links) to online resources. I want to explain how this can be done with the online service Diigo. This tutorial will consist of several components that describe: a) Diigo, b) Diigo account options, c) establishing a group, d) sending bookmarks to this group, and e) sharing access to the group.

Diigo is an online bookmarking service with social capabilities. Bookmarking involves saving a link to online resources you have identified. You may do this within your browser for the sites you visit frequently. An online bookmarking system allows you to share these bookmarks across devices even devices that you do not own. Bookmarking services typically allow many additional features such as attaching notes, tags, and perhaps even a “snapshot” of the bookmarked sites. This link takes you to a previous discussion of such services.

Diigo offers everything from a free to organization level subscription services. Knowing about these various service levels matters as the features available vary with the level. The free level allows only private group bookmarking. This may be just what a teacher wants. The Diigo group creator then has to share access to the bookmark group with individuals. I pay for the least expensive paid level ($40 a year). This allows me to establish one public group. A public group can be located and joined by others without the group originator having to contact each user. The group I established for this tutorial is such a group and I have membership access set to require that I approve someone wanting to join the group.

Create a Diigo Group.

The top of your Diigo browser window will contain these options. Use “My Groups” to add a new group.

This display will indicate the groups I have already joined. To create a new group, use the “Group Invitation Request”. It is not obvious that this is the way to create a group, but this is the way I do it.

One of the options that should then appear is the button for creating a new group.

This button will bring up a form for labeling and describing the group you want to create. Note that some of the options are not available to someone with a free account. My example describes creating a group I label as “Layer for learning”.

Adding existing bookmarks to a group

It is possible to create a group without contributing bookmarks, but it makes the most sense that to get a group started that you add some of your own bookmarks. To do this, you locate appropriate bookmarks in your personal collection. In the upper right-hand corner of each bookmark will be three dots. Clicking on these dots reveals options and among them is the share to group option. Select the group and members of the group will be able to view the bookmark you have shared.

Sharing access to the group collection

You may want or have to designate group members through invitation. As I mentioned at an earlier point, this is necessary if you are using a free account.

If you have a public group, you can share group access by providing others with the address. For example, I have created a group I will maintain if others find it interesting and add their own bookmarks. The group was created to explore what I describe as layering services. A layering service is a service that allows the annotation, highlighting, and addition of other elements to existing online content (web pages and videos) created by others. Layering offers a way for educators to take advantage of existing resources and add elements that improve the effectiveness of these resources for instructional purposes. Try https://groups.diigo.com/group/layer-for-learning.

As a Diigo user, you can also search for existing public groups that may interest you. These groups may require the group manager to approve your access or may just let you explore.

Membership in a group may include a weekly email identifying new contributions for that week.

Most tech folks have created a Zoom tutorial for teachers who might need to learn the Zoom basics in case or because they must transition to distance learning. Tech companies are really stepping up to offer free services to educators and this is the case with Zoom.

Use this link as an educator for access to the full capabilities of Zoom.

The free basic plan is enough for many applications.