#23: Learning never ends (but the time has come. . . )

Listen to our podcast [2:10]:

Wow! How time flies when you're having fun. That's the power of play.

Even though learning never ends, we've come to the 23rd thing. Just in case you were worried, these 23 Things aren't disappearing, so you can come back at any time and catch up, or add a comment to any of our entries, or explore some more. Because we have feeds to all of your blogs (and we hope you do too), we invite you to keep playing, writing, commenting and sharing. In fact, you can go to the Blogger Template and change the title of your blog (or add a subtitle) so it reflects the ongoing nature of learning 2.0. If you never quite got around to sharing the name of your blog with us, you can still let us know (by commenting on Thing 4.) We know we have some lurkers out there; you don't have to hide!

So now it's time to take stock and reflect on what you've learned over the past 10 weeks. Even if you skipped some of the 23 Things, we're really interested in what you've learned about your own learning during our time together.

Discovery Resources:

1. Go back to Thing #2 and review the Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners. Read your notes (is it still in your 23 Things folder?) or re-read the post you wrote for Thing #4.
   


2. Review all of the 23 Things. There's a list in the very first blog post (linked in the sidebar on the left). Think about which ones you enjoyed and which ones you didn't like or just passed over.



3. Read Will Richardson's "Why is it so Hard for Educators to Focus on Their Own Learning?" from his blog Webblogg-ed. Don't forget to read the really interesing comments at the end.

And now, for our final activities.

Did you play and learn? We've played (and worked) and learned a lot. A lot of a lot. So much so that we were challenged by the Goldilocks dilemma throughout our trek with you. You know, that conundrum of whether it's too much, too little, or just right?

So, did you find anything "just right"?

We want to know! We will be gathering information from here and there, from those of you we know, from those we sort of know, and from those of you who choose to remain anonymous. Please consider informing us of your impressions and/or suggestions through one or more venues:

• Anonymous survey responses (use link below)
• Your blog entries (most but not all of yours indicate names)
• Comments on this blog entry (another anonymous option)
• Email us at 23Things@gcmail.maricopa.edu (both Karen and Christine receive the message) or email one or the other of us!
  

Thanks for taking the trek with us and for letting us know what you think.

Discovery Activities:

1. Complete our survey, please.
   
2. Write a blog entry about what you've learned about your own learning during the past 10 weeks.

So we've come to the end of our travels in the world of Web 2.0, but we know we will keep on learning, and we hope you will too. Happy trails!

Christine and Karen

#9: Feeding Frenzy

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The easiest and quickest way to find feeds is to search for them. Bloglines has a built-in search engine on the top right of the My Blogs page. You can search for posts (individual blog entries) or feeds (whole blogs) by changing the drop-down selector. Like most search engines, you can get closer to what you want by using the additional search options. Google has a specialized search page just for blogs at http://blogsearch.google.com/

But there are quite a few specialized feed tools that you'll want to explore and add to your wagon:

• Feedster - One of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts


• Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.


• Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
  

We'll explore more feed-finding tools in Week 6 when we look at some more funny sounding things like del.icio.us and Technorati.

Discovery Exercise: Using the various search tools mentioned above, go exploring for feeds. (Remember that this is a "discovery" exercise. You can delete feeds later on if you find yourself getting swamped!) Pay particular attention to the kinds of information you find with each search tool.

• Find and add a couple of blogs about personal interests or hobbies and about professional or academic interests


• Using Topix.net, create a search for a particular subject in the news. Do you like how this search engine opens with feeds from your location?


• Check your Favorites or Bookmarks. Some of the websites you visit frequently may have RSS feeds. Add them to see the difference between going to a web page and having the new information come to you.

Tell us what you think! Here's where you come in. Write about your experience. In Blogger, you can create a new post and edit it as often as you want without publishing it. Or you can create several blogs on different topics and work on them as you go. Just make sure to save your entries before you leave Blogger.

Don't know what to blog about? Here are some questions to think about ...

• Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?


• Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing?


• What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels?


• Or what kind of unusual or wacky ones did you find?


• What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

We'll be watching for your blogs in our feed readers!

#8: RSS really is “really simple”

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Wow! What a great list of blogs we’ve created. By now, however, you are probably feeling just a little overwhelmed, right? If each one of us writes an entry or two a week, how can we possibly keep up? Aha! That’s the very clever “thing” we’re going to learn about this week. It’s called “RSS” which stands for Really Simple Syndication. It really is simple! There are lots of explanations, but here’s a good one from Common Craft:

Click To Play

Luckily, Blogger automatically includes a subscription link on every blog it creates (and most other blogging software does too.) As a blog author, you don't have to do anything more. Scroll down to the very bottom of this page and you’ll see it: Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). (Don't worry: "atom" is just a specific subscription method.) That’s the syndication part. See, isn't that simple?

Now put on your reader hat. In order for you to use that Subscribe link, you’ll have to set up a Bloglines account. Bloglines is an aggregator. It goes out and checks each blog to which you’ve subscribed to see if there’s anything new. When it finds something, it lets you know. Once you create a Bloglines account (and don't forget to add it to the list of accounts you set up in Thing #1), you’re ready to play!

Bloglines is really a personal web page, so you can access it from any computer using the URL: http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs However, many people install "extensions" to integrate Bloglines into IE or Mozilla or Firefox. See all the options on the "My Blogs" page. (I highly recommend you install a "Notifier." Even if your browser isn't open, it will tell you if Bloglines has found anything new for you. How easy is that?)

Discovery Exercise:

1. Set up a Bloglines account


2. Subscribe to the 23 Things blog. Open your Bloglines/My Blogs page in another window. Click Add on the top of the left panel. Now back on this page, click on the Subscribe link at the very bottom of this 23 Things page. Copy the URL of the Window that opens into the Blog or Feed URL box and click the Subscribe button. Or watch this YouTube video created by Helene Blowers: Adding RSS Feeds to Bloglines


3. Subscribe to one or two (or all) of the 23 Things participants’ blogs. You can do this by selecting the blogs from the list on the left, scrolling to the bottom of each blog, and clicking the Subscribe link.

Now, you will know when there are any new entries in any of our blogs, just by checking one place. See, it's as simple as 1-2-3.

Extra! Extra! Select a notifier from the My Blogs page and add it to your desktop.

Discovery Resources (for those, like Oliver, who want some more . . .)
There are lots and lots of resources about RSS, so if you're interested in knowing more, it's easy to get knee deep in the big muddy before you go very far.

• Read Chapter 5 in Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. A version of this chapter is available online.
• CNET Video: RSS – Feel the Need for Feeds (3:32) – a good over view of what RSS is and the benefits to users.
• Feed Me: A gentle introduction to Internet feeds - a good tutorial from Palinet, a library cooperative
• A 2-page handout from Educause's Learning Initiative
• And don't forget your friends. Alisa has created a screencast here that explains Google Reader, another kind of feed reader or aggregator like Bloglines.

It doesn't really matter which aggregator you use. Once you're comfortable with Bloglines, you can explore multiple readers and read the recommendations of others. It’s a bit like searching for the holy grail. You can easily export your feeds from Bloglines to other readers or import from other readers into Bloglines.

Tell us what you think! Once you’ve set up a Bloglines account, come back here and add a comment to this post letting us know you’ve been successful. It’s important to us to know that you’re not lost in the deep muddy. We really like reading about your adventures!