Until this week's assignment, I had never heard of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. Setting up my Google Reader went pretty well. In fact, I think I confused myself, because I didn't think it could be so simple! I linked my Google Reader with my blog and Twitter, then I added subscriptions to: several sites of interests (like Netflix and Operation Kid to Kid), my group's organization (World Wildlife Fund), and of course a few RSS feeds. When deciding which ones I wanted to add, I looked at what they were about and how many people had subscribed. Some of the feeds sounded interesting, but only had a few members, which made me think it wasn't too reliable. On the other hand, RSS: CNN had over 13,000,000 members so, in addition to CNN being a well known news site, many other people found it to be reliable as well. All in all, I think Google Reader is pretty useful. As soon as I signed up, all of the blogs from my Blogger automatically came up! Now I can go to my Google Reader and not have to check Blogger too! Also, it's nice having a bunch of information I'm interested in organized in one area. I have information for the class, for my future, and for my entertainment all at one site. As much as I like the idea of Google Reader and RSS, however, I'm still pretty confused with it all. I think I finally managed to get my privacy settings the way I need them to be to find/be found by classmates. (Could someone confirm that?) I found one classmate and my teacher, but that's as far as I've gotten. I've also searched random people's profiles to look at their feeds and it's pretty interesting to see what people share in terms of articles or blogs. After looking at various people's feeds, I checked out my organizations page and I've got to say, they have a ton of well organized information! It's great that they are using this social media site (as well as so many others) to get out so much information to people! It's will also be pretty wonderful in giving information for the Wiki! I didn't realize how helpful RSS would be in the Wiki project.
My overall experience so far in this class has been good. It's great learning how to use all of these tools that I've never really looked into! It's such an odd realization that, although our generation is suppose to be so advanced in terms of technology, I know so little about all of these new social media sites! I think that in order to make everything go smoothly for the remainder of the course, I'm going to ask around more. I was surprised when yesterday I asked one of my friends if they had ever heard of RSS, and they said they use it all the time! They helped me with my settings and everything that I have been trying to figure out all week. Now I feel much more comfortable with it, and I am praying they can help me with upcoming sites if I get confused as well!
I have heard of RSS but never actually knew what it was or what it stood for. I agree is was so simple because it was already set up for us, but the challenging part was trying to find each other! I also subscribed to the site with the most people subscribed to it because I believed it to be the most reliable one. That is very true about our generation. All these social media tools and sites are coming out and we don't know how to use them or even what they are all about! Especially RSS. I wonder how long Facebook was out for the public before it became a huge hit? Will it take that long for sites like this to be recognized and be the next big social media site?
ReplyDeleteI never really knew what RSS was either before this class. I only see the little RSS thing in the web browser but that was it. I logged in and because google accounts are linked I was already subscribed to everyone's blogs. And Matthew Facebook started like ten years ago you saw the movie. I know google plus is a new site I wonder if that will be the new big thing.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of RSS before this assignment either! We had used it sort of with Google searches, but never knew what it actually was. It really is so useful for research since everything is in one place at once. I just find it fascinating how to some people a site is everything, but others have never heard of it.
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