Thing #10

I am an avid news reader. One of my careers lasting about 16 years was broadcasting. I learned to love researching and writing news stories. I learned the Web out of necessity. The stations utilized the predecessor AP wire and Tennessee News Wire. People affiliated uploaded news stories for redistribution. The RSS feeders and news readers are very similar.

I used the internet all the time to find news stories. I love reading about what happens around the world. This service definitely will save me time. I have a feeling that it will keep reading longer and more sources than ever. I no longer have to search so much because I can link my favorite pages to one site and they are regularly updated. It is very efficient and saves a lot of time especially for news addicts.

As an instructor I can make current events and research very current and up to date almost in real time. It makes it easy to keep up with changes and trends. It is great for the class room. All the stories to one site and you can select the public ones to share with your students. You can link sites that pertain directly to your subject and even topic.

For choir and band topics I don't think that this will be that big of a help in the classroom. I like to keep up with music news. As you know news today, history tomorrow. If I had kept all my music news stories I could have written a book on the 80s and 90s rock and the beginning of the new century. So when I teach music history it would definitely work for current events purposes. It may also help me to keep up with recently published research. I plan to teach technology and I believe this service will come in real handy as a lesson and a tool for learning new up and coming technologies.

I like the idea of having a public page. I puts you in the editors chair. You get to choose the stories that you think are important. If you are a broadcaster and well known you have a following. You can program the news for your viewers, students and relevant communities of interested people. As a teacher you are considered an expert on your topic and you are expected to keep your knowledge of you subject area current. As a college professor you are required to do community activities and research. RSS is a good way to see what your peers and doing and where they are getting published.

One thing that really bothers me is that this has been the subject of many lawsuits. People would take news stories from a news Web site and re-post news stories on their pages with links. The main complaint was that it took the viewers away from their site and to another one. Even if the writer and news agency was credited they had stolen their audience. It was a big issue and when I started to learn to design web sites I was told that I could not design a sight like this.