I can’t remember where I got this pointer, but RSS Mix is a tool that will let you “rip” as many different RSS feeds as you like and mix them into one, which, of course, can make for easier learning. It’s in the spirit of Blogdigger Groups and Stephen’s eduRSS, and I’m sure some others. But it’s pretty vanilla, and I like it so far.
Since we’re embarking on our most excellent Tablet PC adventure at our school, I created the following five different search feeds and mixed them into one.
Here’s a link to the aggregate feed that got spit out.
I think the key to using this effectively is to figure out the best resources for search feed creation. Yahoo News is the easiest since you can use its advanced search to add all sorts of options that aren’t quite as clear in the hacked Google News search. I’m not sure how to focus Blogdigger feeds, and I have a feeling most of what I’m going to get from that isn’t going to be very helpful. PubSub on the other hand gives a great primer on syntax that can really focus a search, and I’ve been playing around with that concept more and more. In general, I’ve really liked the results I’ve been getting with PubSub feeds.
As a result, I’ve already found an interesting little tidbit about Microsoft’s future plans in the Tablet PC space.
No matter what tool you use, this is the kind of info mining that educators and their students need to start practicing, I think. In fact, Dave Pollard has a wildly (at least to me) interesting post on the continuous scanning of information. It’s geared more toward a corporate environment, but his points are well taken. If we can develop the tools and skills to make relevant information come to us, we’ll be well on our way. The hard part, then, is what do we do with that information after we collect it…
Dude, I wrote about mini-Tablet PC rumors on ETI a while ago. Even _I_ have Microsoft Watch in my aggregator.