How do you stay up-to-date in both your
field of study and the every-changing world of digital technology? It's
incredibly important to have a regular ritual or habit of reading
journals and newsletters in your field, especially because things change
so very fast! In this document, I will introduce you to several online
tools and technologies that are frequently used to stay abreast of
changes in various professional domains.
Often called by their more proper technical name, listservs (R), electronic discussion lists are a way for geographically separated professionals, scholars, and enthusiasts to congregate and communicate on a topic of interest. A listserv allows a person to send one email to the list, which then transparently sends that message on to the email addresses of all of the subscribers of that list. I have participated in several electronic discussion lists over the past few years and have found my participation to be very rewarding on several levels. Perhaps the best aspects for me are that electronic discussion lists help me to stay aware of developments in my field and easily enter discussions with leading practitioners. I believe you can duplicate my experiences by selecting electronic discussion lists of your own.
Of course, like many of the resources about which we're learning in this course, you'll be surprised to find out you are probably participating in many listservs already, you just don't realize it or maybe just didn't use the term listserv to describe it. Listservs are the technical term for the "back office" that manages nearly every electronic newsletter, bulletin, deal alert, school newsletter, customer loyalty program, and many others. But they can be so much more than merely alert and news tools. They can be powerful professional tools for keeping up in your field and sharing information with your colleagues.
Another aspect of the electronic discussion lists world that may not occur to you right away is how flexible and varied these tools are. So while you may not think of it this way, Twitter and its cousins ShareThis, Instagram, et al. are really just variations of the basic principle of a listserv: one message rebroadcast to any in one automated step.
How to Find Electronic Discussion Lists of Interest to You and Your StudentsPosters and Lurkers
1. You can use your web browser to find electronic discussion lists of all types.
Here are some recommended electronic discussion list-related WWW sites to get you started:Teachers Network has many resources for teachers including a searchable lesson plan archive and videos, but in addition they have a short roster of teacher and teaching-oriented LISTSERV lists. On this page you will also see a link to a more generic listserv database at L Soft, a listserv software company.
Education World has a web page introducing teachers to listservs (it covers much of the same content as this document). In addition, this page discusses several popular lists although you will have to do some searching (via Google or Bing) to find the homepage of these lists.
Education World
2. Join one electronic discussion list and soon folks will mention others that exist on related topics. This form of networking can be very useful at finding lesser know and non-indexed lists.
The main thing is to make this activity your own. Please don't subscribe to a list just to complete this assignment. Rather, you are going to subscribe to a list to join the ranks of professionals in your chosen field.
Simply put, posters are people who post, or send messages, to a electronic discussion list. Lurkers are those folks who don't actively participate in the group by posting. The ratio of lurkers to posters varies from list to list, but you can be sure that there are lots of lurkers out there. Many lists offer unlurking days to make lurkers feel more comfortable about posting for the first time. Lurkers can feel safe to post without being mocked by Net regulars 8-).
Unmoderated vs. Moderated Electronic Discussion Lists
There are typically two types of electronic discussion lists. The most common type is the unmoderated list, which means that a completely automated computer service re-sends each message addressed to the mail list, no matter how relevant (or irrelevant). No intelligent agent filters or *moderates* the discussion. Unmoderated lists have a high "noise to signal ratio," which means there are a lot of trivial messages distributed via unmoderated electronic discussion lists.
A moderated list is guided by a
moderator, usually a person, who reads the messages sent to the list
and determines whether they are worthy of being re-sent to the entire
list. Some moderators edit and abstract each posting. This is a lot of
hard work, which is why moderated lists are less common than
unmoderated lists. Here are a couple of outstanding moderated lists:
- The Internet Scout Report: An excellent electronic discussion group to which you should subscribe is The Internet Scout Report. The Internet Scout Report is really more an electronic newsletter than a true electronic discussion group, but it illustrates an exceptional use of the electronic discussion group concept.
The Scout Report is a valuable weekly chronicle of Internet news--what's new and interesting on the 'net. The Scout Report mailing list is a "distribution-only" list which is released once a week. Subscribing to the Scout Report mailing list means that you will automatically receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report every Friday.
If you want to add yourself to this mailing list, browse to: <http://scout.wisc.edu/About/subscribe.php>.
- ASCD SmartBrief: Another good moderated list to which you might subscribe is the daily ASCDSmartBrief. ASCD SmartBrief is a free daily e-mail news service that provides summaries and links to major education stories and issues, as well as education employment opportunities. To subscribe, click this link: <http://www.smartbrief.com/ascd/>.
- Science Friday: Science Friday is a source for news and entertaining stories about science. Since the very beginning of the WWW (Science Friday was the first show to broadcast over the World Wide Web, and host Ira Flatow was the first person to use the word “podcast” over the airwaves), Science Friday has introduced top scientists to public radio listeners, and made learning about science fun. They also produce award-winning digital videos, original web articles, and educational resources for teachers and informal educators. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter in order to keep up-to-date on happenings in the wonderful world of science.
A
blog (or weblog) is a website in which
messages are posted and displayed with the newest at the top. Like
newsgroups and discussion boards, blogs often focus on a particular
subject, such as food, politics, or local news. Some blogs function as
online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to
other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Since its
appearance in 1995, blogging has emerged as a popular means of
communication, affecting public opinion and mass media around the
world. Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or
they can be run using blog software on regular web hosting services.
The term blog is a blend of the terms web and log, leading to web log,
weblog, and finally blog. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or
adding an article to an existing blog is called blogging. Individual
articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts" or "entries." A
person who posts these entries is called a blogger.
How Blogs Differ from Traditional WWW Sites
A
blog has certain attributes that distinguish it from a standard web
page. It allows for easy creation of new pages: new data are entered
into a simple form (usually with the title, the category, and the body
of the article) and then submitted. Automated templates take care of
adding the article to the web page, creating the new full article page,
and adding the article to the appropriate date- or category-based
archive. It allows for easy filtering of content for various
presentations: by date, category, author, or other attributes. It
allows the administrator to invite and add other authors, whose
permission and access are managed by the blog's administrator.
Blogs are different from forums or newsgroups. Only the author or
authoring group can create new subjects for discussion on a blog. A
network of blogs can function like a forum in that every entity in the
blog network can create subjects of their class. Such networks require
interlinking to function, so a group blog with multiple people holding
posting rights is now becoming more common. Even where others post to a
blog, the blog owners or editors will initiate and frame the discussion,
manipulating the situation to their goals or interests.
The Growth and Significance of Blogs
The first broadly popular American blogs emerged in 2001: Andrew Sullivan's AndrewSullivan.com, Ron Gunzburger's Politics1.com, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire and Jerome Armstrong's MyDD—all blogging primarily on politics. In 1999, then owner of popular technology review portal, The Review Center, John Guilfoil theorized that daily, and often multi-daily updates instead of the often used weekly news updates seen throughout the technology reviews world would soon be needed in order for these web sites to survive. He suggested that shorter, more pointed news updates in the theme of livejournal.com, which was then a fledging blog site, would be necessary across the board. This revolution in up-to-the-minute updating and real-time news updates has led to the evolutionary shutdown of countless amateur technology web sites.
By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) gained rapidly increasing importance. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging.
In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called "The Blogging of the President," which covered a transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television. In the summer of 2004, both (America's Democratic and Republican) parties' conventions credentialed bloggers, and blogs became a standard part of the publicity arsenal. Mainstream television programs, such as Chris Matthews' Hardball, formed their own blogs. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary declared "blog" as the word of the year in 2004. From zero to hero in four short years! Since then, news blogs such as WikiLeaks have routinely beat traditional news organizations to the story. Blogs have become a staple of modern journalism.
RSS is a family of web text-feed formats, often specified in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and used for Web syndication. RSS and XML are the formats or technologies in which most blogs are published. RSS is used by (among other things) blogs, news websites, and podcasting. RSS "pushes" new data out to users, often without any specific human input once certain rules and guidelines have been specified. The abbreviation is variously used to refer to several different technical standards:
Really Simple Syndication
Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
Real-time Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
So
are you aware that you probably already participate in one or more RSS
feeds? Sure you do, if you follow anyone on Twitter, participate in
Instagram, or get updates from any one of a number of news
organizations, you're probably already participating in an RSS (or
RSS-like) feed.
RSS feeds and Blogs sometime work in
tandem, just like we learned earlier that listservs and user groups
sometimes go together. Web feeds are widely used by the weblog
community to share the latest entries' headlines or their full text,
and even attached multimedia files. Since mid-2000, use of RSS has
spread to many of the major news organizations, including Reuters, CNN,
PR Newswire, and the BBC. These providers allow other websites to
incorporate their "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary
feeds under various usage agreements. RSS is now used for many
purposes, including marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity
involving periodic updates or publications. Many corporations are
turning to RSS for delivery of their news, replacing email and fax
distribution. And, of course, feeds such as those we see in Twitter and
Instagram follow this same pattern...continually updated information "pushed" to you without you having to request it each time.
Multiple Technologies Drive Feeds
In addition to various formats and
varieties of RSS, there are other technologies that accomplish the
same tasks. One of the most common is XML. Extensible
Markup Language (XML) is a standards-based general-purpose markup
language for creating special-purpose markup languages, capable of
describing many different kinds of data. In other words: XML
is a way of describing data and an XML file can contain the data, too,
as in database. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing
of data across different systems, particularly systems connected via
the Internet, and has become a popular tool for RSS feeds and blogs.
Whatever technology you use, the task is basically the same.
Using RSS
Technical issues aside, as the
mainstream media attempts to realize the full potential of RSS, the new
media is utilizing RSS by bypassing traditional news sources. Consumers
and journalists are now able to have news constantly fed to them
instead of searching for it. A program known as a feed reader or
aggregator can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display
any updated articles that it finds. It is common to find web feeds on
major websites and many smaller ones. Some websites let people choose
between RSS or alternate formatted web feeds; others offer only RSS.
RSS-aware programs are available for
various operating systems. Client-side readers and aggregators are
typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions (plug-ins)
to existing programs such as web browsers. Browsers such as Apple's
Safari, Internet Explorer 7 or newer, Opera browser and Firefox have
fully integrated feed reader functions. If you're using Internet
Explorer, pre-version 7, then it probably won't work. From version 7
on, when you subscribe to an RSS stream, the selection becomes a
pull-down menu in your browser's toolbar menu. The headlines of the
stream are displayed when you pull down the menu. Microsoft has a page
describing the use of RSS in IE at:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Using-RSS-feeds
If your using Windows and don''t have IE 7 or newer, use Firefox. When
you click the RSS icon, you get a page with the following message:
This is a “feed” of frequently changing content on this site.
You can subscribe to this feed to receive updates when this content changes.
Select the manner in which you want to receive the news stream, and
then you're set.
On a Mac, just use Safari. When you're on a page that has an RSS feed,
click the RSS icon in the location bar (just to the right of the URL of
the currently-displayed page).
Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators combine existing web feeds into new feeds, e.g., taking all football related items from several sports feeds and providing a new football feed. There are also search engines for content published via web feeds like Google Blog Search, Technorati and Bloglines/Ask.com.
On Web pages, web feeds are typically linked
with the word "Subscribe," an orange rectangle, 
,
or with the letters 
or 
.
Many news aggregators such as My Yahoo! publish subscription buttons (
)
for use on Web pages to simplify the process of adding news feeds.
Integrating RSS and Blogs Into Your Daily Routine
While RSS is pretty easy to set up if you have the right browser, many people have a hard time figuring out how to get the feeds without disrupting their daily routine. One answer is Blogtrottr (https://blogtrottr.com/). Blogtrottr delivers updates from your favorite news feeds and blogs directly to your email inbox, giving you the flexibility to stay updated without having to add a new step to your daily digital routine. In essence, blogtrottr combines the power of RSS feeds with the convenience of listsers (remember listservs?). So if you follow the Twins or the Minnesota Legislature, you can subscribe to their RSS feed (most sports, entertainment and government entities maintain RSS feeds) and have the daily new delivered directly to your email inbox. How's that for convenient?
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