# Feedly (my RSS reader of choice since Google's decision to sunset Reader) is listed in the App Store with its full name: "Feedly - Get Smarter"
The app also sometimes says "never stop learning" in the main view before refreshing the feed.
And it got me thinking:
What learning tools, resources or courses out there share lessons via RSS? Are there any?
Surely, this has to be a thing and if not, why not?
It strikes me as the perfect delivery vehicle for regular, segmented lessons and I wonder about the scope of actual learning via this mechanism.
Comments
# Adi Robertson writes on The Verge about still using RSS for "niche, non-important-seeming raw material" because social curation "tends to let a few big stories take up more space"
But, for her, this comes with a down side: "it no longer feels like a space that I organize. It feels like just another feed."
Curating a list of RSS feeds is just as important, and takes just as much work, as curating a list of accounts to follow on social networks. To say it is not a space you organise is a bit of a cop out.
But one other point from the piece is probably more relevant:
"it’s not where I see the pieces everyone else in my field has been reading and sharing."
I think this is the real problem. The more that people rely on social networks to share items, rather than posting it on their own sites, the worse this is going to get.
The quick-fire, dump and run behaviour is so tempting. It saves having to have an opinion or even having to have read the item. Links can be quickly shared through a couple of clicks with the content of that share pre-populated - no effort required.
It's quite sad.
But what is encouraging is the (ongoing) poll result with 83% of respondents (at the time of writing) still using an RSS reader, 76% of those religiously. Myself included.
Not only that but the obvious passion behind many of the comments shows that RSS still has a place and is loved by many.
Perhaps it is bias creeping in - those who still use RSS are more likely to read the piece and respond to the poll - but thousands of people clicking through and making the effort to vote (on the weekend, no less) is still encouraging.
@johnjohnston Good. I’m glad it’s not just me who thinks it’s a good idea.
@colinwalker :reaches for it:
@colinwalker I’ve taken part in learning that involved RSS both to push content to learners and aggregate their responses.
@eli ?
@colinwalker iTunes U, and podcasts are built on the back of RSS, so I guess they’re sort of an educational tool that works over RSS.
@eli Tenuous ?