Just an update on my ongoing experiments with using RSS as a continuous research tool for teachers or students. Frankly, I’m still amazed at the concept that we can pretty much automate our research into a particular topic that we want to follow on a regular basis. (I know I still haven’t understood all of the implications of this as another idea on how to use this just occurred to me now.) Anyway, for the past few months I’ve been running searches on Google, Feedster, and Bloglines and then aggregating the RSS results feeds into my Bloglines account. It’s become pretty clear that the last two are more effective than the Google search, which in some ways surprised me. I guess I originally thought that since Google searches such a huge number of Websites, it would generate more results. But the fact is that the bloggers included in the Feedster and Bloglines searches are better at sifting through all those pages and culling what is most relevant to what I’m looking for. I’d say about 75% of the links that come back lead to something potentially interesting. Not so with Google.

Anyway, with Manila’s viewRssBox macro, it’s not a great leap to set up pages dedicated to certain search terms that might be relevant in class and just have the most recent results just show up when you access the page. Put a few of these feeds on the same page and you can start building a pretty comprehensive resource for a particular unit or theme. Or use it on a departmental home page. Or…well, you get the idea. Not rocket science, I know, but more than enough to keep me interested.
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Jay Rosen has been ruminating on the positives and negatives of a recent trend among some Webloggers to “adopt” a particular journalist and deconstruct that person’s reporting on a regular basis. Most of the ones I’ve seen so far have been motivated by politics (not necessarily politically motivated,) and I think it’s potentially an interesting idea to bring into my classroom on some level. Since my journalism II class starts in a couple of weeks, I’m trying to figure out a few different topics for them to blog about, and this deep reading and thinking exercise might fit. As Jay says

Observation is a discipline. It takes care. It improves with practice. It brings your mind down to the sensuous details of the case. (For example, a journalist’s tone.) Tracking reportage will, I think, be an education for those who do it– in fact, it is journalism education, in which all enrolled are to be self-taught by November. I am strongly in favor of that.

I know I have said this before, but I love watching the way all of this is evolving. I’m not sure we’re going to get to the point where every reporter has a widely read blogger fact checking his or her behind, but just the mere fact that “ordinary” citizens who feel so compelled can now find an outlet for their motivation to add to the record on a potentially meaningful scale is a significant change. Is there potential for abuse here? Sure, and Jay correctly worries about what those motivations may be. But I think that the more opportunities we can provide for people to exercise their freedoms of speech (whatever remain) to a wider audience is a good thing. And besides, the knuckleheads who do try to abuse it won’t sustain much of an audience anyway.
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