Will Richardson’s OTA09 Breakout – RSS: Connecting Ideas and Knowledge

These are my notes from Will Richardson’s first breakout session at OTA 2009 on February 10, 2009, in Oklahoma City, titled “RSS: Connecting Ideas and Knowledge.” MY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

Showing how he can add tags to different blog posts he follows in Google Reader
– separating tags with commas
– some tags added make sense to everyone (youtube and education) and others may make sense just to me/you (“journ2hc” is the tag for my journalism class)

Some folks in Will’s Google Reader under “thinkers”
– Mark Pesce
– Dana Boyd
– Larry Lessig
– Kevin Kelly

Search YouTube for “Google Reader Tutorial” to learn how to use Google Reader

Dewey Decimal System really doesn’t work today as a taxonomy to organize information
– we are in the midst of a disruptive change in how we organize content
– now we are using a folksonomy

this reader is my textbook for how these technologies change teaching and learning
– I am the editor of my textbook
– I am constantly editing, making editorial decisions
– chapters in my textbook are created by the tags I add
– organizational piece is important here

Search YouTube for “Google Reader Tutorial” to learn how to use Google Reader. Example.

I usually use 2 or 2 tags, Scott Mcleod uses about 20 per post
– there are no hard and fast rules about this

My advice: use Google Reader to collect feeds about things you are passionate about
– starts with Google Blog Search
– example “mountain biking unicycle”
– I want people, not information, that is why I am using Google Blog search for this
– so there is a group for mountain unicycle riding
– if you subscribe to 10 things you have no interest in, you’ll never come back and read more
– so subscribes to things about which you have interest and passion!

there is a big editing piece here
– I need to go through a process
– who is writing to this blog, are their ads or commercials, who owns the blog, is there are a name associated with it
– I always look at blogs with names connected to them differently than anonymous blogs

our kids should be skeptical about information from the outset
– of every piece of information they get from the web
– this is not a unit at the end of 5th grade
– this is something that is part of learning throughout the curriculum

Looking for frequency of posting, number of comments, is the author’s name clearly visible, all those things are important
– if I decide I want to subscribe to this blog, this is not rocket science
– to add to Google Reader, you just need to know how to copy and paste
– take the address of the blog you want to subscribe to, go back to Google Reader, and click on Add a Subscription

Another example http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%2221st+Century+Skills%22&btnG=Search+Blogs search on Google Blog Search
– how this gets really cool, is I can subscribe to this search
– you can refine this search like you would with any other Google search, and subscribe to that refined search

AN EXAMPLE OF A SEARCH TO WHICH I SUBSCRIBE IS ‘MYSPACE OKLAHOMA’ BUT I SEARCH THAT ON GOOGLE NEWS, I DO NEED TO TRACK MORE CANNED SEARCHES LIKE WILL IS DEMONSTRATING USING GOOGLE BLOG SEARCH. THIS IS VERY GOOD STUFF.

It is not enough to just find someone, but you need to interact

Example not in the keynote: first reportage of the plane landing in the Hudson came from Twitter
– within several minutes, twitterpic image taken by someone on the scene was on the frontpage of NPR

We’re talking about this for YOU, your own learning

Another example: news.google.com
– can do this same search and subscription process

You can build a very interesting information
– I encourage you to stop at about 10 feeds
– use an add one, drop one rule for awhile
– you can get overwhelmed with this pretty easily

Model Google News Search: “21st century skills” and location:ok
– can do same search for your superintendent in Google News and Google Blog search
– so that is a good way to talk about this with your superintendent

Getting sources from a particular location is very powerful
– example: learning about Darfur, from sources in Darfur
– we need to give

great example: global warming coverage in the US compared to other countries like Germany
– lots of critical reading/literacy skills to practice here

I had my journalism students create RSS feeds
– students were contacting the people writing the articles, asking them questions, managing streams of information

This does not work with Google Scholar at this point, there is not consistency there now [I THINK THIS REFERS TO THE SUBSCRIPTION FEATURES]

Yahoo Pipes is like an “if then” for RSS feeds, letting you funnel information in specific ways

What do we get when we get to 2011, will we still call them “21st Century Skills?”

Old way to capture information
– save this URL To my browser bookmarks or favorites
– many of you have these lists probably that descend down into the earth’s magma
– that is the old way to do it: this would be the only machine where I could access those
– also old because others with a passion for that topic could find it or use it without me taking specific steps to share it
– so the new way to do this: share this on a social bookmarking website like delicious.com/willrich

Now demonstrating how to save a new article, highlight the thesis statement/focus and then click on bookmark button to tag the site
– when you sign up for delicious it takes you through the steps of setting this up
– if you still have trouble, go to YouTube and search for “delicious Youtube”

showing how you can send to someone with the “for tag” – for:wfryer
– also tagging with other keywords, both common ones and personally significant ones

I LIKE HOW WILL IS DEMONSTRATING TAGGING IN MULTIPLE PLACES, BOTH IN GOOGLE READER AND IN DELICIOUS. HE IS DEMONSTRATING SOME OF THE MOST CRITICAL, IMPORTANT INFORMATION LITERACY AND LEARNING TOOLS AND SHOWING THE AUDIENCE CONTEXTUALLY HOW THESE WORK, AND WHY TO USE THEM. VERY GOOD DEMONSTRATIONS.

You can have some really smart people doing some great work for you, bringing you some great content

I have identified about 50 people that I have included in my delicious network (http://delicious.com/network/willrich)
– example is Clay Shirky, following what he is reading and tagging on delicious

This is “web goodness”
– lots of sharing by people who are very transparent with what they are sharing
– the more you give away, the more receive as being transparent

I have weak ties to many people, strong ties to many others
– lots of rich learning possibilities here amidst all these connections

I am interested in the topic “network literacy” so I have a constant flow of information about this topic from Twitter and Blogsearch

Now a demonstration of Diigo
– same principle of delicious
– also you can begin to add those annotations

Now discussing Flickr and tag for Educon21
– now about 1400 photos posted from EduCon

John Peterson’s flip video cam video from Educon 2.1

every session from that conference was streamed live to the internet and is available free
– can subscribe to a particular tag on Flickr, YouTube, other places

Cloud Computing means you are doing all your work on other people’s servers
– if you threw my MacBook Pro in the river I would be upset, but I would not lose any photos, documents, or any software
– if Google ever goes south, I’m in huge trouble 🙂

INTERESTING THAT WILL DOES NOT HAVE ANY COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE AT ALL ON HIS COMPUTER. THIS IS POWERFUL MODELING OF THE POWER OF CLOUD COMPUTING AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. I HAVE ALSO THOUGHT ABOUT THIS IN TERMS OF GETTING A NETBOOK AND PRESENTING WITH IT. HAVING EVERYTHING ON THE CLOUD. NOTHING LOCAL. WITH BANDWIDTH PROBLEMS AT CONFERENCES THIS CAN BE RISKY, I THINK I AM STILL MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE WITH OFFLINE COPIES OF PRESENTATIONS AND VIDEOS. I THINK THIS MODELING IS VERY IMPORTANT, HOWEVER. IT IS ONE THING TO TALK ABOUT AN XO LAPTOP OR A NETBOOK, IT IS TAKING IT TO ANOTHER LEVEL TO USE IT REGULARLY AND USE IT FOR A KEYNOTE PRESENTATION.

A reader like Google Reader is a private way of sharing what you are reader
– you can create a more transparent way of sharing your personal news
– pageflakes and netvibes are examples
– also iGoogle

Benefit is letting everyone have access to it
– a website portal that is constantly updated with new and dynamic content

You can do this with iTunes, podcasts, iTunesU lectures, videos from Ted.com (really smart people who share amazing ideas in 20 minutes that can really rock your thinking), etc.

Google Reader does not make it easy to see where people’s shared items are

I EMBED MY SHARED ITEMS IN THE RIGHT SIDEBAR OF MY BLOG TO SHARE GOOGLE READER

Bloglines is another web-based feed reader

Google Gears
– can download the items from Google Reader for offline reading
– then it will sync up next time I go online
– works with Google Docs too
– GMail not working that way yet

EduCon: model was people giving short 10-15 minute presentations, and then focus questions for each session which were facilitated

Technorati Tags:
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