The World A.T. Ways

Posted By Kevin Gaugler on October 23, 2008

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In a previous post, Barbara gave a general description of RSS and how to begin subscribing to feeds. I have to be honest, when she first told me that she wanted to write about the basics of RSS I thought it might be too elementary for our readers. RSS has become such an integral part of my life and such an essential part of the way I learn that I now take the syndication of web content for granted. I wrongly assumed, however, that anyone reading a blog would know how to subscribe to its content.

I knew I was wrong and Barbara was right when I decided to discuss the topic of RSS with students the other day in my Spanish and Technology class at Marist College. To my surprise, out of the 20 twentysomething-year-olds in the class, only one had ever heard of or subscribed to an RSS feed. What’s more, all but one owned an iPod, but none had ever explored the Podcasts section of iTunes, nor had any of them ever subscribed to any free content available in the Podcasts directory.

Upon discovering my students’ blind spot to RSS, I couldn’t help but think of Mark Prensky’s work regarding digital natives and digital immigrants. According to Prensky, my students are suppose to be digital natives and I a digital immigrant. But are they digital natives without knowing RSS?  Yes, my students know how to use an iPod, but only to listen to music and watch Hollywood movies and TV shows. My informal poll revealed that these students have never had the pleasure of listening to free Ted Talks lectures in their car. They have never gotten angry by listening to Slate’s Political Gabfest during a morning walk. They have never learned about new technology by listening to Leo Laporte. This media constitutes a large part of my everyday repertoire as does my daily dose of RSS content from Spain’s El País newspaper and television and radio from RTVE. In short, RSS has been my lifeline to life-long learning about my world. Or perhaps one could say that RSS has given this immigrant a kind of digital citizenship.

Remember, for Prensky, I am a digital immigrant because I didn’t grow up with the Internet. However, even immigrants can recognize the value of knowledge showing up on their desktop. Immigrants also cherish saving time by subscribing to rather than searching for content. And who other than immigrants can better expose natives to points of view they normally would not encounter in their daily routines? Our students obviously remain unaware of parts of the Internet that do not float to the top of MySpace, Facebook and other social networks. Immigrants expose natives to the “other”, providing new points of departure into the digital world. It might be up to digital immigrants, therefore, to give the natives a more flavored view of their digital surroundings. Digital immigration does not mean one is digitally worthless, just digitally different.

Whether you are a digital native or an immigrant, watch this four-minute presentation by Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, as she explains the coverage of international news in the United States. Ms. Miller will convince you that our students need to subscribe to international news sources more than ever. So after you watch the video and are inspired, pick a few newspapers from other countries for your class, find the RSS icon on the site and subscribe. Your university’s course management system probably already has the ability to read RSS feeds. If not, sign up for Netvibes and create your own customized news source. Then, share it with your class. Finally, let the Word A.T. Ways community know how you use RSS to teach all things international by leaving a text or video comment on the site.

By the way, if you have never watched a lecture from the Ted series, you’ll be hooked after this so be sure to subscribe to the Ted Talks feed afterwards.

Categories: Productivity
Tags: digital immigrant, digital native, iTunes, Kevin, Mark Prensky, Podcasting, rss