Alerts and Feeds
I have begun exploring push technologies recently and wanted to share my experiences. Keeping up with new developments in my areas of interest has often been difficult, especially since instructional technology always seems to have new trends. I began by creating an iGoogle page where I added feeds of interest to me including the Penn Calendar and NMC Campus Observer. I explored Google Gadgets such as “Your Daily Al”. I created my own Google Gadget – surprisingly easy. I added RSS feeds from blogs I read occasionally – now my home page has headlines of new posts.
One aspect I love is the creation of customized alerts. You can make your own at Google Alerts (Beta) and put in phrases – topics, names of people, organizations. You will then receive daily or weekly alerts when web content containing your phrase is posted. You may get too many hits with a common phrase, but I have found this effective with targeted search terms. For example, my Google alert for the phrase “Weigle Information Commons” led me to a new architectural website that I may never have learned about otherwise.
Very interesting. I’m wondering:
How might faculty use alerts and feeds to better reach their instructional impacts?
How might students use them to better ‘organize’ their learning?
Do we know of any faculty who’ve set up content-specific iGoogle pages, for example? Could you see students using Google alerts to stay up-to-date on coursework-related topics, for example?