Laying some groundwork - What's a "Feed" on the internet and what's a good reason to have them?

Knowing that we have some "technologically challenged" members out there sometimes I feel motivated to spread some tech ideas because "technologically challenged" is exactly where I would be if I didn't have a husband who was a self professed nerd.  Feeds is one of the things where he looked over my shoulder at my ever growing list of browser favourites and said "you know there's an easier way to do that, right?"

Before he explained it to me, I used to think feeds and email messages were just advertising to come look at stuff so the site owners can get more income from advertising.  They partly are, of course, but they are also a tool that you can use to help you make your way through the mind-boggling amount of social media out there.  I thought I'd take a moment to explain Feeds and how they can work for us as teachers.

Most of us are fairly familiar with Facebook.  We log in and stuff that our friends post (or posts in groups we have joined) appear so we can just scroll down instead of checking everyone's all individually.  That's what a "feed" is.  Most social networks have them, often sending out email notifications when new stuff enters your feed.  You can subscribe to or follow things like blogs, YouTube channels, Pinterest boards and so on.

Feeds can be a great way to get a lot of information and I find them VERY useful.  I've subscribed to a couple art boards on Pinterest because they have lots of great stuff that I want to be able to go back to when I'm searching for something specific to target X or Y in the curriculum.  When they put up something new I also get a notification and can have a quick overview through my email, go to it if it grabs my interest and then re-pin it to my own board if I think it's particularly nifty.  Using the feed makes it a quick and easy process instead of sitting down on a Saturday and going to each board I've subbed to has something new to look at.

Generally speaking, all you need in order to do that is to have an account with the social media site.  Then when you "friend", "follow" or "favourite" someone or something it will turn up in your feed.  If it stops being interesting or relevant you can take it off the list again if you think you need to.  It just helps you sort the wheat from the chaff in the massive amount of social media out there.

As teachers we tend to have an affinity with blogs, YouTube channels and so on that share our views on teaching.  Many teachers I know have a huge number of links in their browser's favourites bar and they periodically check back in to see if anything new has cropped up.  I used to be exactly the same but now Feeds are a great time saving measure for me.  I get a notification that something new is there and usually a short excerpt that helps me to decide whether it's going to be of interest to me or not.

Of course there's the downside...  I've got a Blogger account, a YouTube account and a Pinterest Account.  These I actually use so I naturally have an account.  I ALSO have an account for other social media sites that I don't actively use simply to give me access to the feed that goes along with it...  It can be a bit of a jumble of user names and passwords to remember.  Still, as a Network Coordinator I keep an eye on LOTS of stuff so my list of feeds is unusually large.  It's not likely that many will have as many as I do. 

If you use social networking sites regularly through bookmarks in your browser it might be a good idea to create an account to get access to a feed.  A YouTube account, for example, can certainly make sense for the feed alone, even if you never intend on uploading any videos.

When you are on FaceBook you naturally get access to many things like videos and articles.  Sharing them is quite active but somewhere out there there's a person who found it somewhere and created the original post that's being shared around.  Feeds help these people to find things worth sharing and by having them YOU could be the person finding things to bring to Facebook.

Of course as teachers we often are looking at "teachery things" and not all of our friends are teachers.  Bombarding them with "teachery stuff" can get old for them after a while and this weighs on many of our minds.  Belonging to interest groups on Facebook etc allows us to get around this issue.  We're sharing things with groups with a common interest on that thing.  We can become active in sharing things that like-minded people might otherwise not come into contact with.

Feeds, of course, might not be the thing for you and I certainly get notifications of stuff I'm not particularly interested in.  They might be worth it for you though... It's worth learning how to use them effectively if you think they might save you some time.

Regards,

Mel.