[Update 3/29/2013: While the information in this post is still good, I’ve written a general post about RSS that uses Feedly for illustration. You can find it here.]

[Update 3/17/2013: While Google Reader, discussed below, will be shut down July 1, 2013, RSS is still very much alive.  See this blog post to read about a couple other RSS feed readers.]

How many websites do you visit a day?  When do you find time to go into your college library’s database to look at what’s new in your professional journals?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had your own personal web-butler?  You know, someone who could go visit all of those sites and databases and let you know if there’s anything there you might be interested in?  Ah yes, kick back with your $4 cup of Starbucks coffee, snap your fingers, and your own personal web-butler brings you your news.  Yeah, that would be nice… <sigh>

Good news!  Meet your web-butler: Google Reader.

In fact, there are many different web-butlers at your service, collectively they are called RSS feed readers or news aggregators, but I think web-butler has a certain ring to it.  Some are web-based, like Google Reader.  Others are software you download to your computer.  Actually, you probably already have a feed reader.  MS Outlook and Firefox, for instance, both can read RSS feeds.  In Outlook, you can find “RSS feed” below your inbox, just above your “sent items” folder. In Firefox, they’re called “live bookmarks.”

Lots of webpages have implemented RSS feeds, content that is readily readable by RSS feed readers.  Many post this sporty little icon:

[For the curious, RSS is an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication.  And it is really simple.  So simple, in fact, you don’t need to know how it works.  Just trust your web-butler to handle it.

In the end, which RSS feed reader you choose comes down to personal preference.  Is it easy for you to use?  Great!  You’ve found the one for you!

I like a web-based feed reader because I can access it from my work computer or my home computer… or my Wii, if I’m so inclined.  The downside to most web-based readers is that you have to have internet access to read your news feeds.  One of the reasons I like Google Reader is that I can read my news feeds offline by using Google Gears, an addin for Firefox and IE.  When I reconnect to the internet, Google Reader takes the information from my computer and updates my feeds on their site.  For instance, at the airport before boarding, I visit my Google Reader page so my computer has the most up-to-date feeds, then I click a little button, and it switches me to offline use.  Once we reach our cruising altitude, I get caught up on the news, blogs, etc.  I even can mark articles from my professional journals that I’d like to read later.

Since Google Reader is the one that works best for me, I’ll be talking about how you can get set up with it.  But all readers work in basically the same way.  Subscribe to a news feed.  Read the news feed.

Here’s the one-minute overview courtesy of Google Reader:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSPZ2Uu_X3Y]

On the left you can see some of the feeds I’m subscribed to.  The ones in bold are the ones with unread content; the number in parentheses tells me how many unread items are in that feed.  On the right is content from some of my unread feeds.

A lot of faculty are unaware that their library’s databases have RSS feeds.  For instance, in the image above, I have an “APA” folder that has two APA journals in it.  Google Reader retrieves each journal’s table of contents giving me the title, author, journal info and some journals even give me the abstract.  Clicking the article title takes me directly to the article in my library’s database.

To subscribe, visit your library’s website, and open your favorite database.  Locate the journals, magazines, or newspapers you are interested, and look for the orange RSS icon.

Click the icon.  An additional box may pop up and you may need to click the feed link to get to the page where you click the button to add to Google Reader.  Alternatively, you can copy the feed URL, go to Google Reader and click the blue “Add a subscription” button, then paste in the URL.

If you find this blog helpful, consider adding it your feed reader.  Just click the RSS icon on this page!

A word of warning.  Do not feel like have to read everything!  Your RSS feed reader is not going to pass judgment on you if you don’t read absolutely everything it brings you.  Think of this as your personalized newspaper, but just like any newspaper, you are not going to read everything.  And that’s okay!

Oh, one more thing.  People often wonder how you delete individual items inside a news feed.  In Google Reader, you don’t.  They just get marked as read when you read them.  That means that everything that came to you in a news feed in Google Reader is searchable.

Use Google Reader for work, but don’t forget to have a little fun!

For online collaboration, there are Google Docs and Zoho.  Both are tools that allow collaboration on word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentation slides, among others.  This is ‘cloud’ computing — moving files off desktops and into the internet cloud.  Both seem to try to mimic as much of the desktop experience as possible.

But if you want quick and easy (no logins, no ‘sharing’ of files and folders) click-a-link-and-go online collaboration, ScribLink and EtherPad TitanPad may be exactly what you’re looking for. Both of these are great for working with students during virtual office hours as well as collaborating with colleagues.

If you’ve tried either of these, please let me know how they worked for you!

EtherPad TitanPad [Updated 2/14/2011 : Etherpad as a website has gone away, but the software lives on in a number of places, such as TitanPad.]

If all you want to do is collaborate on writing text in real time, EtherPad TitanPad is an excellent choice.

This is real time editing.  As you type, all others in the room can see what you’re typing, and more than one person may type at once.

There is a chat box for communication, although one user testimonial on the EtherPad TitanPad site says that when their team meets, they open EtherPad and login to a conference call.

You may save as you go, and those revisions are saved in perpetuity.

This is a very simple little program that does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

Do you have a student who is having trouble with a paper?  Meet with them in real time to discuss the problem areas (they can copy and paste their paper into EtherPad TitanPad) and watch as they make the edits or offer your own suggestions.    Do colleagues come to meetings with laptops in hand?  Have everyone join you on your EtherPad TitanPad to keep meeting minutes or if you’re working on rewriting policy, use EtherPad TitanPad to wordsmith.

Update (9/7/09): Etherpad added a new feature called a “time slider.” Etherpad now ‘records’ your edits as you go. Use the time slider to play back all the changes made.

Scriblink

When you visit the Scriblink website, this is the screen you see.  With a quick glance you can see that Scriblink is more involved than EtherPad.

Scriblink boasts an intuitive interface, which is great because there doesn’t appear to be a user’s manual.

Everyone who is in the room can use all of the features… at the same time.

The tools include:

• Drawing tools (marker, straight line, square, circle), text, eraser, and grid (which turns the entire white board into graph paper).  Change the color of the drawing tools, the color of the background, and the size of the drawing tool.
• Math symbols (click the pi button) using Latex; click on the image to embed the equation you created. [Note: This feature didn’t work in Firefox for me.  When I told Firefox to simulate IE, it worked perfectly.]
• Upload images. Be aware that to upload images you need to have popups enabled.  If you enable popups after you already have content on the whiteboard, your screen may refresh and your whiteboard may go back to its original, unwritten upon state.

On the far right of the screen are the communication tools.  Users are automatically numbered as they arrive, but you can certainly change your name.  An interesting feature is that your name changes color as you change the color of your drawing tool.  To invite people, you can either “Get URL” and send that out via email, IM, or whatever way you’d like, or you email directly from the scriblink page.

When you are done, you can save the file. In which case, the file is saved on the Scriblink servers, and they’ll email you a link to access it.  To print, Scriblink loads a new webpage where it rotates the (png) image 90 degrees in a nice printable format.   Finally, by clicking “send” you can email the weblink to whomever you’d like and include a little message with it.

“Send file” allows you to send a file from your computer, say a spreadsheet, to everyone in the room.

The chat window is straight-forward.  Type to chat. If you’d rather talk, there is a VOIP and free phone conference (long distance rates apply) option, although I confess to having not used either of these features.

Here I have used some of the Scriblink features:

The only thing I find cumbersome about this program is that once something is on the board, there isn’t a way to select it as an ‘object,’ grab it, and move it.  With the equation editor and image uploads, when they are first brought onto the whiteboard, you can move them, but once they’ve been placed, they are not going anywhere.  You’re only options are the eraser (use the size control to change the size of the eraser), the undo button, or to clear the entire whiteboard.

In March 2009, the Scriblink folks wrote that they “have some huge announcements on the horizon,” but the nature of those announcements were unspecified.

As a side note, I first used Scriblink in the fall of 2008 while on sabbatical in Georgia.  A friend of mine joined me for a rousing game of vice presidential bingo.  I found bingo cards online, took screen shots of two of them, saved them to my computer, then uploaded them into scriblink.  We each chose a different color marker and marked our bingo cards as we watched the debate from our respective coasts.  I confess that I did make an attempt to erase her marks without her knowing it, but she caught me.

Update on 5/11/2010. Etherpad has officially closed its virtual doors.  But there are others you can try.  MeetingWords looks pretty much like Etherpad.  Check out this CNET blog post for additional suggestions.

Let me start with my ‘blog goal’ and a little bio.

I have a minor addiction to new technology.  But not just any technology.  I’m looking for technology (ideally, free) that either makes my job easier or makes it easier for my students to learn.

Yes, I have students. I started teaching college students in Kansas as a grad student back in 1989, and I’m still teaching college students, but now in the beautiful Pacific Northwest at Highline Community College.  If you’ve ever flown into Seattle, you’ve likely flown over my campus.

The tools I’ll be talking about aren’t always ones I’ve tried with my classes.  I don’t believe in using new technology just for the sake of using new technology.  It has to serve a pedagogical purpose.  But just because a tool doesn’t work for what I’m trying to accomplish doesn’t mean it’s not useful for someone else.  For example, psychology is my area, so I don’t have much need for math tools that can handle calculus, but when I come across such tools, I’ll be sure to fill you in.

Some of the technologies I’ll discuss are well-established tools.  Others are hot off the press; so hot, that they may still be in beta testing.  Although, keep in mind that Google Docs and Gmail are both, technically, still in beta testing.   ‘Beta testing’ has more meaning in some circles than others.

Your comments are most welcome!  If you’ve tried some of the technologies mentioned in this blog, let me know how they worked for you.  If you’re trying to solve a particular pedagogical issue and are having trouble finding the right tool, let me know.  If you come across a new tool that you think should get an airing here, let me know.

With that as a quick introduction, let’s get to the content!