The most striking observation from two days at the CIL conference is that THE hot topics of conversation are Weblogs and RSS. I can’t tell you how many times I overheard people taking about blogging or asking questions about RSS. There were no fewer than eight opportunities to learn about these technologies, and there were at least 200 people at Jenny’s presentation yesterday on the wonders of RSS. I really get the sense that the news is starting to spread faster and faster. It’s pretty cool to watch, as always.
And Tom points to a post by a colleague who has started a new Drupal blog and is thinking about how all of this could work. More visioning:
This RSS stuff is quite cool. I’ve spent the last day sifting through blogs about technology, education, and educational technology and subscribing to their feeds for the “site cloud” and “news & resources” sections. I’m excited about the networking possibilities a tool like Drupal and RSS can provide for K-12 schools. I imagine a network of school websites, or portals, which are independently maintained but are interconnected using RSS feeds. Imagine a school district with a district site, and individual school sites. Info. from the district site RSS feeds to school sites, and vice versa. Top to bottom, bottom to top. Parents with PDA’s or pocket pc’s or laptops or desktops can get feeds from their school and stay up to date on happenings and news. (Is there an RSS aggregator available for PDA’s, cell phones, or pocket PC’s? Could be a cool new project to work on. The idea is exciting.
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