Teaching RSS: A Discussion
11.29.05Of all of the Web2.0 tools I know of, I think that RSS is one of the most difficult to explain to new users. I've been doing a lot of explaining lately - in trainings, blog posts and work proposals. I thought I'd put my current thinking down in text and see if others are interested in contributing their thoughts as well.
Here's some observations I've made lately and teaching practices I've been employing:
- An actual demonstration goes a long way. That's why I've set up a demonstration account with online feed reader Newsgator, my favorite RSS reader. I tell people they can log in and see what a reader seeded with a variety of types of feeds looks like. The username is "marshalldemo" and the password is "welcome" The account contains basic mainstream media feeds, government feeds, blog feeds, search feeds, multi-media search feeds, scraped feeds (via Feedfire.com), podcast subscriptions and others. I think that gives visitors a good idea of what sorts of information is receivable via RSS.
- My medium-lengthed RSS definition is currently as follows: "Many web sites now publish their content not just in HTML as your browser views them, but also in a format called XML. You can subscribe to the XML content of any web site to receive any changed content into a special inbox for feeds. So a new article in the New York Times international business section, a new post to a blog you like, a new email in your email inbox or even a new result in a web search you've subscribed to...any time that new content is available from any of those sources it will automatically be delivered to your feed reader inbox. So that means that you don't have to go to a site more than once - if you like it you can just subscribe to its updates in the future. You don't have to go to sites to check for updates only to find that a site is unchanged, or even remember what all the sites you're interested in are. Lots of different information streams are all delivered to one place, set up like a personal news desk. It saves a lot of time, increases the amount of information you can absorb and can make you one of the first people to get that information."
Ok, so that's no elevator pitch. How about: "RSS is a system you can use to set up a special inbox to receive automatic notification of any new information available from a wide variety of sources: news sites, blogs and even searches. Just subscribe once and you'll get updates from whatever sources you chose automatically."
- Subscribing to a feed URL is not very intuitive to people who are used to being passive web consumers. If you're used to copying and pasting a URL after things like a href, then it's probably no big deal to you. But I know that I want to teach people who focus on things other than the internet how to use the internet. So it really does take some talking through with people to help them either "copy shortcut" or to go to an XML filled page, stop screaming with horror and copy the URL into their feedreader.
- Before I show some one how to use RSS, I like to ask them what some of their favorite news sites and blogs are. I set up an online feed reader account (Newsgator or Bloglines) for them, seed it with feeds from their favorite sources and some search feeds, and give it a basic password they can change later. That way they can see RSS in action and relevant to them right away.
- I usually use feeds from Google Blogsearch and Technorati for blog intro blogsearch, Topix.net for US news search or Yahoo News for domestic and international news, MSN Search for web search and Blinkx.com for podcast search.
- If I'm really feeling able to spend some time on it, I'll create a metafeed channel by splicing all the tag search feeds from Tagcentral.net into one feed via Feed Digest. That delivers items tagged in del.icio.us, Flickr, Upcoming.org social calendar and other tag-supporting services.
- In an account filled with feeds, there has to be some way to differentiate between high-value feeds and lower-value feeds. I advise people to place feeds with lots of items in them, where any single feed is less likely to be essential to read, in folders together by theme. On the other hand, feeds with fewer results or from which each result is essential to read (like inbound links to their own site or blog), can be placed outside of any folders so that new items will be immediately visible and won't get lost in a torrent of feed items.
- Finally I always teach feed reading in conjunction with tagging. Let's be honest, though RSS does enable greater information absorption with increased efficiency - it also has the potential to deliver far more information than a person could possibly absorb. I tell people, you've just got to let a lot of it zip by and when something looks interesting - open it in another tab. If it is interesting, tag it into Del.icio.us (or sometimes Spurl.net if the pared down UI might be intimidating, or if a cached copy is key).
- Finally, after finally, I always contact people some time afterwords and see how their feed reading is going. I ask them to let me log into their feed reader account to see if I can advise them how better to organize the feeds, what else they might want to subscribe to, etc.
Well, that's a lot of information - but describing, much less teaching RSS is a complicated thing to do. This discussion leaves out the use of RSS for attention streams, RSS to HTML, RSS to IM (something I hope Immedi.at can help me make work ASAP), analytics, security and countless other possibilities. They don't call it a separate language for nothing!
Your thoughts on explaining, teaching or using RSS are more than welcome. I hope we can share our knowledge so that all of us will be more effective in our efforts to extend adoption of this fantastic technology.
Technorati Tags: RSS, teaching, adoption, explanation, web2.0, search
November 29th, 2005 at
Teaching RSS
Marshall Kirkpatrick gives us a very nice discussion of what he does when teaching RSS (web feeds) to people.
November 29th, 2005 at
Thank you for the article, I think this is the most comprehensive yet straight forward definition I have found so far.
Cheers,
Chuck
November 30th, 2005 at
[…] À ATENÇÃO dos professores de jornalismo e não só: Teaching RSS: A Discussion. r […]
November 30th, 2005 at
Marshall,
I’ve given a few talks/workshops on RSS and the metaphor that made it work for most people was the concept of a party.
http://shareski.blogspot.com/2005/11/meet-my-friends-in-my-aggregator.html
Still, it remains a challenge to remove the “geekiness” out of it and explain as a powerful social networking tool.
November 30th, 2005 at
Marshall
The university where I work in Hong Kong will be providing weblogs for all students and staff from next semester (Feb). Consequently, I am currently running sessions for faculty on using RSS for their research work. I want to help them become familiar, and hopefully, proficient with this as users first. I’m doing the sessions jointly with a colleague from our library and we will run repeat sessions early next year and then I will create some follow-up sessions on using weblogs and rss for teaching and learning. Then further follow-up session on collaborative technologies such as wikis (using writely, backpackit, jotspotlive) and other recent technologies. But like Dean mentions getting away from geekiness right now is not easy. RSS = Feeds or Subcribing, wikis = online ccollaborative writing environments, alternative ways of presenting. I need to think more about how to remove a lot of the geeky language - at least up front.
If you or others are interested in the learnshop and outline and links to resources can be found at http://celtrss.notlong.com I started to do this in jotlive but then there server went down before the first session last week so I have to move things to my own site.
November 30th, 2005 at
I like Dean’s idea. Here is a similar one that I use:
I am from New Orleans where we like to eat. We have some of the best restaurants in the world. Unfortunately, since the choices are endless, it would take me quite a while to get to all of my favorite places to get all of my favorite foods. I would have to go to one restaurant for the appetizer, one for the gumbo, a third for a salad, another for the entree, and so on. Instead of running all over the city, I could just have my favorites all come to me at home and end up right on my table (what a dream). I wouldn’t have to go to each individual restaurant. I would be notified anytime something new was added to the menu including daily specials. That’s RSS!
Now I still like to go out and enjoy the ambiance of these individual restaurants from time to time and get out of the house. I like the decor, and I like to take a deeper look at the menu. There’s nothing stopping me from going. Similarly, there is nothing stopping me from visiting all of the various websites that are contained within my RSS feed. It’s just not something I want to do everyday.
December 2nd, 2005 at
[…] Enjoy! Marshall Kirkpatrick » Teaching RSS: A Discussion Aaron Nelson@ 3:11 pm […]
December 16th, 2005 at
Great stuff! Keep fightin’ the good fight.
January 7th, 2006 at
[…] Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a recent post about the difficulty of teaching what RSS is to the average joe. I won’t go into describing his post, as it is long, and you can just click on the link, but at the end of the post, Marshall asked others to contribute how they teach it. Dean Shareski contributed this idea which I have heard about before. In Dean’s solution, he looks at RSS like a big party where you can hear and take part in varying conversations. It looks something like this: I’m amazed these people have time when they’re so busy preparing. Yet I know they’ll talk to you. Bud, Clarence and Konrad live in different countries but both are very transparent with what they do. Just watching them will show you a lot. If you want to know what’s happening in the trenches, these are the people to talk to. Darren is another Canadian who can take a topic you might not think would be worthy of conversation but makes it engaging. Anne does some neat things as well. She’s pretty busy. I’ve known Kathy for years and she will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Very adventurous and works with people you might not think can handle much. She makes it work. Oh Steve’s just leaving the kitchen. He’s a great guy to listen to who will make you feel like you’ve known him your whole life. I’m not sure exactly which room he’s going into now. […]
January 16th, 2006 at
[…] I started off looking for an article I saw earlier in the week about how to effectively teach RSS. Well I found that article, but it started off with “Of all of the Web2.0 tools I know of, I think that RSS is one of the most difficult to explain to new users.” which made my brain say, wait, what exactly is Web 2.0 anyway? I thought I should know about that before I go into a specific tool. Here’s what I’ve gathered so far: […]
March 7th, 2006 at
[…] I don’t know if I should have put this at the top or here at the end, but I have also written a long post about how I teach people to read RSS feeds. […]
March 30th, 2006 at
[…] If you’re new to my site, here’s some links that might fill you in on my perspective: Teaching RSS: a discussion 13 reasons to use tags. […]
June 24th, 2006 at
[…] For more useful info on marketing RSS, check out How to Sell RSS (Or Where the Feed Fanboys Drop the Ball) and Teaching RSS: A Discussion. Explaining RSS is much more difficult than it would seem to those of us who use it daily and these two blog posts really get to the heart of how to explain it simply and how to show why RSS is practical and useful in our daily lives. […]
November 2nd, 2006 at
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December 3rd, 2006 at
nice post Marshall - I wonder how I missed this before. But I learn almost all of it in the time I spent in my previous organisation - explaining new people about RSS.
I think you should update the post with google reader - it becomes a lot easy to explain and demo as you teach!
my experience in grad school as a teaching assitant came to use here.
my way was usually:
1. HTML - XHTML (Mobile) - XML - RSS - Feeds
2. Aggregation - explain ‘river’ concept on how info comes to you rather than you going after information
I was very happy once 15 mins into the session someone who didn’t know blogs, rss - got the concept and asked me - then why should I come to mytoday or timesofindia website any more
June 23rd, 2007 at
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September 13th, 2007 at
[…] Marshall Kirkpatrick » Teaching RSS: A Discussion A good effort at explaining RSS to new users. (tags: rss blogs feeds tutorials teaching) […]
October 27th, 2007 at
I’ve been trawling for a decent explanation of RSS and readers for awhile now. Thanks for clearing the fog!
October 30th, 2007 at
I like RSS. Could you give me a good RSS book(Really Simple Syndication).Thank you!
November 15th, 2007 at
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November 27th, 2007 at
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November 27th, 2007 at
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December 22nd, 2007 at
Thank you for your wonderful web site and this guest page
December 31st, 2007 at
Hi,
So, let’s chat! Any news?
January 2nd, 2008 at
Hey Marshal,
Nice discussion. I agree that getting to teach the basics are always difficult. I also compiled my understanding about RSS on my blog, may be you can take a look.
Its “All About RSS” at http://shahharshal.com/blogs/technology/
-Cheers,
Harshal
January 2nd, 2008 at
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January 3rd, 2008 at
[…] Teaching RSS: A Discussion explaining feeds to yo mamma (tags: tools tips teaching rss) […]
March 18th, 2008 at
[…] Day 1: Sign up for Google Reader and select some blogs (ideas-I highly recommend ReadWriteWeb as you go on this expedition), old definition of RSS and almost-as-old post on teaching people about RSS […]