NASPA Tech Tools: Technology tools for student affairs professionals

We hope that many of the tools we have introduced throughout the Tech Tools program will be useful for you in your professional and personal lives. But let’s step back from the trees for a moment to look at the forest.

Often Different and Sometimes Better - But Not Always!

Two of the traits I admire most about the student affairs professionals whom I most respect is their thoughtfulness and intentionality.  Those same traits should serve us well as we continue to evaluate new technologies and how others are using them and how we can use them.

For example, one technology about which some people are very excited is Twitter (If you don’t know what Twitter is, go ahead and view Lee Lefever’s “Twitter in Plain English” video.  Go ahead - I’ll wait.).  Twitter is really big among some groups of people, including several higher education administrators and educators whom I admire and respect.  In at least one campus emergency students and staff used Twitter very effectively to communicate with and reassure one another.  But student affairs professionals should examine Twitter before committing to widespread adoption.  Does it meet a real need or is it simply a hot new buzzword?  Do the benefits outweigh the (often intangible) costs?

This evaluation requires both knowledge of new technologies and an openness to experimentation.  And that has been the point of this program: Introduce some newer technologies and offer examples of their use so you can make an informed decision.  Nearly everything we’ve looked at is free so the cost of experimentation is very low and it’s pretty easy to learn more by using the tools.  Don’t just step back and watch as students and adventurous colleagues try out new tools.  Learn by doing!  Experiment!  Play!

Thanks

I’d like to publicly thank some of those who have been involved in the Tech Tools program:

• Christina Dulude who not only wrote the material for Week 4 (Tagging and Folksonomies) but also helped in setting up the blog, including writing a custom WordPress plugin that helped us make this a NASPA members-only benefit
• Joey DeSanto, Stephanie Gordon, Zafer Bebek, John Kennedy, and the rest of the NASPA staffers who provided invaluable support and encouragement.  Allowing us to conduct this program, including registering a new domain name and contracting an off-site hosted service, was a brave move and a wonderful example of the openness to experimentation discussed above.
• The fine folks at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County who created the original program that inspired Tech Tools

Now It’s Yours

This is the last  scheduled posting in the Tech Tools program.  We’ve opened up the program to everyone, including those who are not members of NASPA, in the hopes that you can use and reuse this content.  As noted at the bottom of every page, the original content developed for NASPA Tech Tools is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License so you can use all or part of this for your own training and professional development programs on your campus or in your organization.

We’ll continue to respond to comments and questions but now this is all yours!

(Note: Throughout this post, I will use the abbreviation “SNS” which stands for Social Networking Service. Others refer to them as Social Networking Sites or Online Social Networks. There are subtle differences between all of those terms but let’s not get caught up in semantics.)

You may not have ever used Facebook but I know you’ve heard of it. If you have teenage children, you’ve probably heard of MySpace. You or someone you know may be a member of the professional networking service LinkedIn. Each of these services has several million active users (Facebook recently said that they alone have over 90 million users.  Those are all prominent examples of Social Networking Services (SNSs).

Given the popularity of Facebook among college and university students (75% - 95% of American undergrads have Facebook accounts (Ellison, 2007)), we’re going to largely concentrate on Facebook.

What is an SNS?

SNSs are “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (boyd & Ellison, 2007). This is a scholarly definition, so let’s break it down with an example.

1. I have an account on Facebook (shown on the right; my friends’ names are blanked out of respect for their privacy).
2. If I were to view the “Friends” section of my Facebook profile (it’s in the top in the blue navigation bar), I would see a list of my friends, other users with whom I have a connection.
3. When I view one of my friend’s profiles in Facebook, I can view their friends, too.  So I know who is connected to whom.

So Facebook meets all of the criteria laid out by boyd & Ellison. So what? Why do SNSs matter?

What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between ‘latent ties’ (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection. On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily ‘networking’ or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network (boyd & Ellison, 2007).

So for (many!) millions of people, Facebook and similar tools are a virtual hangout, phonebook, source of news and gossip from and about their friends and acquaintances.  How do we know this?

What Students Do On Facebook and Why They Do It

Several scholars, including those in higher education, communications, and computer science, have studied SNSs and what people do on them.  One of the best studies of college students was performed by Brett Bumgarner, then an undergraduate at UNC Chapel Hill.  Working with Fred Stutzman and others, Brett performed research on students at UNC Chapel Hill to determine (a) what students on Facebook and (b) why they do that.

He found that students use Facebook for (in order):

1. Friend functions: Accepting, adding, browsing through, or reviewing friends; seeing how friends are connected; showing friends other individuals
2. Personal information: Reading personal information, looking through photos, reading walls, etc.
3. Practical information: Course and contact information
4. Regulatory functions: Features that offer users control over their accounts, i.e., updating info or photos, privacy settings or editorial control over walls
5. Groups: Features related to Facebook groups
6. Events: Finding or planning events
7. Misc. features: Friend details; social timeline; “pulse”; poking; social Web visualization; being friends with high schoolers; etc.

When he asked students why they use Facebook, they told him that they use it for (in order):

1. Social utility: Using Facebook with friends; talking with others about Facebook
2. Directory: Use as a directory and to keep track of people, such as for class information
3. Voyeurism: Learning about others from a distance; comparing oneself to others
4. Herd instincts: Usage because everyone else does; not wanting to be left out
5. Collection and connection: Amassing friends; organizing friends; feeling connected to others
6. Personal expression: Expressing oneself, such as to develop relationships; gaining feedback on oneself; having others understand oneself
7. Initiating relationships: Meeting people, particularly for romantic or sexual reasons; finding parties or events

Although Brett’s research was initially conducted a few years ago, it is consistent with the majority of research that has been conducted and published.  It’s also a wonderful example of how an undergraduate can make a meaningful contribution to the advancement of knowledge as Brett’s senior honors thesis has been cited many times by leading scholars and researchers.

Discovery Resources

Now that we know a little bit about and why some students use Facebook, what can we do with Facebook?  There are many answers to that question and here is a good place to start.

Want to know more about Facebook and SNSs?  The October 2007 issue of the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication has a special section on SNSs.  The introductory article “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” is a great place to start if you’re looking for a solid introduction to SNSs that cuts through the hype and misconceptions.  Eszter Hargittai’s “Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites” is also a fantastic article that explores differences between those who use different SNSs; I explored this topic a bit in the Technology Center article in the Spring 2008 issue of Leadership Exchange.

Discovery Exercise

If you haven’t signed up for a Facebook account, consider doing so after you’ve read through Fred’s recommendations and thoughts.

If you already have a Facebook account, share with us in the comments below or in your own blog if you have found it useful in your professional and personal lives.

(Only one blog post this week.)

We all know and love (or hate) our office software: Word, Word Perfect, PowerPoint, Keynote, Excel, etc. But did you know there are free online programs that are very similar and in some ways better? This week, we’re going to explore a few of them and see how they compare to their counterparts.

The most popular of these online applications is Google Docs, a free online office suite. If you have already registered for a Google account (you did if you registered a blog with Blogger in Week 1 or set up Google Reader in Week 3) you have access to Google Docs. Once again, we turn to Lee Lefever of Common Craft:

As Lee describes, Google Docs and other similar tools allow you to place documents (text, spreadsheets, and presentations) online, invite collaborators, and access those documents from any computer connected to the Internet (and, increasingly, mobile devices like cell phones). Although there are other tools available, colleges and universities are increasingly embracing Google Applications and encouraging students, faculty, and staff to use those tools. EDUCAUSE has a great collection of Google Application-related documents in their library if you are looking for more information about Google Applications.

More than just text

Google Docs allows collaboration:

Another really cool feature of Google Docs is the form tool:

Discovery Tools

The Official Google Docs Blog has many excellent examples of how others are using Google Docs. Here are a few posts from that blog or links to other blogs that might inform you about Google Docs and stir up your imagination:

• To Mars, and beyond
• Aliza’s chronicles, part 4: collaboration, quick and easy
• Marking work in Google Docs
• Scriptwriting in Google Docs

If you’re looking for more videos about Google Docs, including tutorials and advanced features, here’s a great place to start.

Discovery Exercise

Visit the links above and view some of the videos. How could you use Google Docs? Share below in the comments on on your own blog!

(Apologies for posting this so late. Apparently the “Save” and “Publish” buttons really are different from one another…)

Earlier this week, we discussed downloadable audio and podcasts. Now, let’s turn our attention to video.

Video on the World Wide Web has exploded. To illustrate this point, let’s focus on YouTube. Although the website was created only in 2005, it was purchased in late 2006 for $1.65 billion. Over 80 million videos are available on YouTube. And YouTube isn’t the only webpage that allows users to upload, view, and comment on videos. Numerous other competitors exist, including several like CollegeHumor that cater specifically to traditional undergraduates.

Rather than focus on the technical aspects of creating, uploading, and viewing videos online (YouTube has a very good help section that can answer many questions), let’s instead focus on the use and impact of videos.

Demonstrations and illustrations

Throughout the course of the TechTools program, you’ve seen us use several videos (many from Common Craft) to demonstrate or explain concepts. Videos allow us to combine visual elements such as diagrams and animations with audio elements such as voiceovers and sound effects that clarify, explain, and reinforce ideas and concepts. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a 30 second video that has 24 frames per second is worth…a lot of words (720,000 if you must be exact). Add actual words to the video through the use of text overlays and audio and that’s a lot of content!

Many of the videos produced by Michael Wesch and his colleagues and students at Kansas State University perfectly illustrate the power of video to powerfully communicate complex or difficult ideas or observations. One of his most recent videos offers a view of today’s undergraduate students:

Video blogging

There are even more exciting aspects of online video that go way beyond simply explaining technical or academic concepts and ideas. Videos are being used to enhance and form social connections and bonds.

One excellent example of how videos are being used in a more social context is the phenomenon of “video blogging” or “vlogging.” Recall from our very first lesson that blogs are often used as public or semi-private journals, enabling people to share their thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Video blogs are used in the same manner but they obviously use video instead of text.

Let’s take a look at one very powerful example. As described by Andy Carvin, Amanda Baggs is “a prolific blogger, an avid user of the virtual reality world Second Life, and a popular video blogger on YouTube.” She is also autistic. In the video below, she shares with us some of her own personal language and thoughts. I know this video is a bit long at nearly 9 minutes but it’s well worth watching.

I don’t know if it’s due to my own preconceptions, ignorance, or expectations but this is an extraordinarily challenging video for me to watch. Setting aside the emotional and intellectual impact of Amanda’s message, I simply can’t conceive of a more appropriate medium than video to deliver this message.

Two Practical Examples

While it may be easy for some of us to view visual elements such as video as extravagant, difficult, or simply “extra,” for some they are highly desirable or necessary.  Some of us are highly visual learners and prefer visual elements.  Some of us, however, have very poor hearing or difficulty with written or spoken language. Gallaudet University, for example, is famous for serving deaf students and the deaf community.  Robert R. Davila, president of Gallaudet, periodically produces a video blog to effectively communicate with constituents of Gallaudet.  It would obviously be very difficult or impossible to convey sign language using a medium other than video and sign language is obviously the language of choice for those associated with Gallaudet.

A more light hearted example of the use of video comes courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.  During the 2006-2007 academic year, students at UW-Green Bay could find out about upcoming events on campus by watching the very entertaining and informative “Stuff2Do” video.  This series of videos won a Gold Medal from CASE and they definitely earned it!

Discovery Resources

View some more of the videos produced by Wesch’s Digital Ethnography project.  For now, try to focus on the medium and the manner in which the content is presented and not on the content itself.

Here are a few of their videos that may be interesting:

• Information R/evolution
• The Internet has a Face
• The Machine is Us/ing Us

Discovery Exercise

Focus on the use of video as an effective medium to communicate and connect.  Are there programs in which you are involved that could be better explained, advertised, or conducted using video?  Share your thoughts below or in your own blog!

The World Wide Web is not just a visual and textual medium. As computers and networks have become faster, audio and video have become more prevalent and accessible. Today, we’ll discuss audio and podcasts.

Audio

E-mail is widely considered to be the first “killer app” of the Internet, the application that made the Internet popular and useful. For a later generation, Napster was the killer app that drew them to the Internet. Napster was a program that allowed people to easily copy and “share” music; although most of the activity enabled and encouraged by Napster was illegal, it was immensely popular. Napster was shut down several years ago but its legacy lives on. Easy access to music was established as both a technical and cultural movement and copyright infringement, particularly of music and movies, remains a challenge for both college campuses and those who own the rights to those intellectual properties.

One of the technologies that made Napster viable was the mp3 file format. At its most basic level, an mp3 is a sound file that has been “compressed” so that it’s as small as possible. Small files can be transmitted over the Internet quicker and more songs can be fit into one space - a hard drive, an mp3 player, etc. - than large files. Today, mp3s and similar files can be purchased instead of CDs on Amazon’s website, downloaded using Apple’s iTunes program, and many other services. Of particular note is Ruckus, a service that is free for all US and UK college and university students.

Podcasts

It’s one thing to record music or speech, make it into an mp3 or similar file, and place it on a website for visitors to download. But when mixed with RSS mp3s really become useful and easy!

First, let’s revisit RSS. In Week 3, we covered Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS allows you to subscribe to news items, blog posts, or similar items so they’re automatically delivered to you when new ones are published. In 2000, a few visionary souls decided to experiment with inserting mp3 files into RSS. The idea has taken off and now there are many thousands of podcasts created by professionals and amateurs. Similar to Google Reader that allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds to keep up with news, programs like iTunes allow you to subscribe to podcasts and automatically download to your computer or your mp3 player new podcasts. Just like RSS frees you from having to visit websites to locate new news stories and articles, podcasts deliver audio to you so you can listen to your favorite radio shows and commentaries on your own time.

Lee LeFever of CommonCraft explains:

A Practical Example

At the 2008 NASPA Conference, staff from Bridgewater State College shared with us how they redesigned their student leadership activities to use podcasts. To address some of the challenges with their old program, they recorded a series of ten fifteen-minute podcasts discussing different leadership topics. This allowed students to participate in that segment of the leadership program on their own time - in their residence hall room, walking to class, commuting in their car, etc. One significant advantage of this new approach was that this program was made more accessible to groups of students who previously had not participated, including commuter students and non-traditional students.

Discovery Resources

There are several online directories of podcasts:

• Podcast Alley
• Podcast.com
• Apple iTunes

In the Education sections of those directories, you’ll find podcasts that are (a) professionally-produced discussions of news items (National Public Radio has several education-related podcasts), (b) amateur productions, often created by academics or consultants, or (c) recordings of academic classes, lectures, and speakers. There are also several tutorials on those websites that walk you through the process of creating your own podcasts.

In addition, EDUCAUSE offers many podcasts, including a regular podcast produced by EDUCAUSE staff and recordings of conference presentations and discussions. These are great examples of how a professional organization can use podcasts to keep in touch with members and make conference and educational materials available to a wider audience.

Discovery Exercise

Take a few moments to explore the podcasting directories above or the EDUCAUSE resources. Does your campus produce any podcasts (the answer is probably “yes” - ask around!)? Would podcasts be effective and useful for your department or program?

Earlier this week, we introduced and briefly explored a few wikis.  In this lesson, we’ll explore a few more wikis, discuss Wikipedia, and link to a free tool that will allow you to create your own wikis.

A Practical Wiki Example

One of the professional organizations with whom I am affiliated uses a wiki for their entire web page: The ResNet Symposium.  At first glance, this webpage may appear to be rather normal but it’s really a wiki for members of the organization it’s really easy to edit and update.

Here’s a quick example of how I’ve been able to use this wiki: My affiliation with the ResNet Symposium is that I collaborate with their research arm.  This spring, we launched an updated version of a survey we conducted in 2005.  We were able to easily and quickly copy the questions from the old survey instrument to a series of new pages where we could easily discuss the questions, edit them, delete ones that are outdated and irrelevant, and add new questions.  For example, you can see where we deleted some questions in one section based on our discussion of the questions in that section.  If this website were not a wiki, this level of easy and quick collaboration would have been much more difficult.  But because it’s a wiki we had the freedom to create and edit these webpages ourselves.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is by far the most popular and most used wiki in the world.  While many academics, scholars, and pundits continue to debate the accuracy and usefulness of this online encyclopedia it remains one of the most popular reference tools in the world.  An exemplar of the use and philosophy of a wiki, Wikipedia allows nearly anyone to edit nearly any article.

Why should we care about Wikipedia?  First, it’s an influential and groundbreaking social and scholarly phenomenon that may point the way to the future.  The idea of an encyclopedia that “anyone can edit” is rather remarkable and its success is even more remarkable.  Second, it’s an extremely popular resource that many people regularly use.  For many topics, the Wikipedia article is one of the very first things one sees when searching for information.  Go ahead and type in the name of your college or university into Google and see where your institution’s Wikipedia article falls in the list of hits.  Is anyone at your institution keeping an eye on your Wikipedia article to see what others are saying about it and what information others are reading about?  Did you know there is a Student Affairs Task Force in Wikipedia that focuses on student affairs-related articles?

If you’re new to Wikipedia and you’d like to get involved in editing some articles (I’m sure the Student Affairs Task Force would welcome new members!), here is a good place to start.

Discovery Resources

Now that you’ve read about and explored several wikis, let’s arm you with a resource that will allow you to create your own wikis.  pbwiki is a company that hosts many, many wikis for businesses and individuals.  Wikis related to education are ad-free and basic features are free.

• pbwiki has several resources listed on their education page, including case studies and whitepapers.
• pbwiki videos are also available that demonstrate several common features (creating a new page, sharing, etc.)
• Tips specific to pbwiki are also available (and note that that page itself is a wiki!)

Discovery Exercises

There are several ways in which you can continue to get your feet wet with wikis:

• Create your own wiki using pbwiki or your campus resources (ask around; I guarantee that others on your campus are already using wikis!)
• Edit and improve some Wikipedia articles

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove, and edit content. Once again, we turn to Lee Lefever of CommonCraft to explain:

Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools (we’ll discuss Wikipedia more later in the week). With the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can easily add, edit, or delete content.
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.

Discovery Resources

Use these resources to learn more about wikis:

• 7 Things You Should Know about Wikis - a brief document published by the EDUCAUSE Learning Institute (ELI)
• Wikis: A Beginner’s Look – an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction and examples. There are many links throughout this presentation that show different examples of wikis and how they’re used.

Discovery Exercise

1. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some college and university wikis. Here are a few examples to get you started:
   • OSU (Oregon State University) Wiki
   • Rochester College Current Students Site
   • Case Wiki, the official wiki of Case Western Reserve University
2. Create a blog post or comment below about your findings. What did you find interesting? How might you use a wiki in your professional life?

So what’s in a wiki? Find out by doing some exploring on your own!

Later this week, we’ll explore how a few more higher education organizations and institutions are using wikis to create and update their entire website and other documents.  We’ll also explore Wikipedia, one of the most popular websites in the world and an encyclopedia built and maintained using a wiki.

Last time, we learned about tagging: a way of organizing information such as online photos, videos or blog posts. Unlike traditional classification schemes that rely on a controlled vocabulary created by experts, tags are chosen informally by the person who creates the item or, on some websites, any user who happens by.

Today, we are going to look at how tagging can be used on three websites to help with research, or just for fun.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a webpage and add tags to categorize your bookmarks. Unlike the Bookmarks or Favorites stored on your web browser, del.icio.us allows you to store your bookmarks online. This lets you access your bookmarks from any computer and to add bookmarks from anywhere also.

Del.icio.us has a useful social networking component also (we’ll talk more about social networking in a few weeks). You can also use this website to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to find interesting links posted by others that relate to a particular topic of interest. This is made easy with tags.

Technorati

Technorati is an internet search engine for searching blogs. As of December 2007, this website indexes over 112 million weblogs. Technorati looks at tags that authors have placed on their websites to help categorize search results.

To have your blog officially listed on Technorati, you must claim it by signing up for a Technorati account. Signing up for an account also allows you to create a “watchlist,” where you can keep track of your favorite subjects and be alerted when blog posts containing the word are published.

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips (we’ll talk more about YouTube in the upcoming weeks). This is another website that makes great use of tagging. When a video plays on the YouTube website, other related videos are displayed in a sidebar. These related videos are determined using the tags assigned to the videos.

Setting up an account on YouTube allows you to post your own videos, comment on others’ videos, and subscribe to certain users’ video streams (among other functions). Creating a YouTube account also lets you subscribe to certain tags. Whenever a video is uploaded to YouTube that is tagged with that keyword (any video; not just ones you have uploaded), it will be listed on your YouTube homepage. For example, you could subscribe to videos tagged with your college or university name.

Discovery Resources

1. Del.icio.us: How do I get started?

Discovery Exercises

1. On the del.icio.us website, find the link for Tags to Watch, on the upper right side. Click ”more…” Type your school’s name into the search field and click the “Search” button. This will return a list of all the webpages that people have bookmarked on del.icio.us and tagged with your school’s name. This page also shows other common tags for each link, as well as how many users bookmarked it on del.icio.us.
2. If you have a YouTube account, you can subscribe to videos tagged with your school name. To do this, sign in to your YouTube account. Find the dropdown menu at the top of the page for Account. Hover over this and click Subscriptions. On the following page, there should be a link to Subscribe to Tags. Type your university’s name here and click Subscribe. Now, whenever you log into your YouTube account, the homepage will show any recent videos that have been tagged with your school’s name!

Tagging is a way of organizing content (such as a blog post, digital photograph, or internet bookmark) organically rather than within a rigid classification system. Tags are keywords that describe content, and allow it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are chosen informally by the person who posts the photo (or blog entry, internet bookmark, etc.), or even by viewers browsing the item.

Del.icio.us is a website that allows you to bookmark a webpage, similar to the “bookmarks” or “favorites” in your web browser. However, unlike your web browser bookmarks, del.icio.us lets you add tags to categorize and share your bookmarks (we’ll learn more about del.icio.us in the next session). As an example, here are the most popular tags for an article called Six “Key Emerging Technologies” for Higher Ed Profiled in the 2008 Horizon Report, that several people have bookmarked on del.icio.us:

You can see that twenty-one del.icio.us users tagged the article with “technology,” twenty tagged it with “education,” and so on. Most websites that make use of tagging allow you to tag an item with as many keywords as you like. In our above example, it’s possible that someone tagged the article with “technology,” “education,” “trends,” and “video.” Clicking on any of these tags on the del.icio.us site will pull up a list of other popular items tagged with that same keyword.

The philosophy behind tagging relies on the “wisdom of crowds” — the idea that when many users tag many items, patterns begin to emerge. This concept is also called a “folksonomy” because it is a taxonomy created by common folks, rather than through a controlled vocabulary created only by experts.

Two weeks ago we learned about Flickr, a photo sharing website that allows users to organize photos using their own keywords. We saw an example of how attendees at the EDUCAUSE 2007 conference posted photos on Flickr using the tag “EDUCAUSE2007.” This allows people to easily find photos relating to the conference posted by many different users.

A tag cloud is a visual representation of the popularity of certain tags. Tags are arranged in a cluster, and those that appear more frequently are either bigger or darker than those that are less frequently used. Here is a tag cloud of the most common keywords used on Flickr:

You can see how some tags (wedding, party, family) are very popular, while others (sun, river, berlin) are used less frequently.

Although tagging is a fast and easy way to organize items, the system does have its drawbacks. As opposed to a traditional categorization scheme with a controlled vocabulary, one tag can have several different meanings. For example, the tag “scale” may refer to a series of musical notes, a tool for measuring weight, or a fish’s scales. Furthermore, while one user may tag an article “university,” another may tag the same article “universities,” although many websites do have ways of reconciling plural vs. singular tags.

Discovery Exercise

1. On Flickr, go to the Popular Tags section. If you have a Flickr account and are signed in, you can just click: Explore > Popular Tags from the menu at the top. If you do not have a Flickr account set up or are not logged in, you can still view Popular Tags. Click the Explore link near the bottom of the page first, and then Explore > Popular Tags.
2. This page lists the most popular tags from the past day, week, and overall. Find the field next to Jump To. Type in the name of your college or university and click Go. Flickr will then display many (or all) of the photos tagged with the name of your institution. Click on one of the photos. All of the tags assigned to this photo are listed on the right-hand side. What other tags are assigned to this photo?

Today, we’re going to explore three related items. First, we’re going to explore some of the RSS newsfeeds that may be of interest to you. Then we’ll briefly touch on some of the search engines that might help you find RSS feeds of interest to you. Finally, we’ll explore some of the more unusual or exotic uses of RSS to spark your imagination.

Higher Ed and Student Affairs RSS Feeds

On Monday, we subscribed to two newsfeeds: the main news feeds at The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. But there’s a lot more out there!

• Most sections of The Chronicle have their own RSS feed. For example, “On Hiring” and the “The Wired Campus” each have their own feeds. Each one of the blogs maintained by The Chronicle has its own feed. In fact, if you poke around The Chronicle’s website you’ll see all sorts of RSS feeds to which you can subscribe.
• Inside Higher Ed also offers several RSS feeds, including feeds for their hosted blogs.
• NASPA offers several feeds scattered throughout their websites. Two feeds to which I am subscribed are the NASPA Forum and NetResults.
• ACPA maintains a webpage listing their RSS feeds.
• All of the blogs mentioned in the first two lessons have RSS feeds. In fact, nearly every blog has an RSS feed.

Once you know what they are and how to find them, you’ll notice that RSS feeds are everywhere! Just look for the RSS icon (to the left), the characteristic orange, and the words “RSS” or “XML.”

Searching for RSS Feeds

In addition to plain ol’ surfing around and checking your favorite webpages for RSS feeds, there are several ways you can locate newsfeeds:

• Blogline’s Search tool - Blogline’s search tool has a “Search for Feeds” that may help you locate RSS feeds in which you might be interested.
• Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
• Technorati and Google Blog Search - Technorati and Google Blog Search are popular blog finding tools that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, these tools can help you find RSS feeds for topic-specific blogs. (It’s also worth noting that both search engines allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds for searches you’ve performed. So if you want to monitor blogs and be notified if they mention a particular word, phrase, or topic, search for it and subscribe to the resulting RSS feed!)
• Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.

Creative Uses of RSS Feeds

Now let’s have some fun and explore some of the more creative uses of RSS feeds! When exploring these, you should not only ask yourself how these specific feeds could be useful or interesting for you but also if your institution, division, or department could do something similar or learn something.

• You’ve been to YouTube, right? (If not, don’t worry; we’ll cover it later in Tech Tools!). YouTube offers many RSS feeds if you want the newest or most popular videos delivered straight to your newsreader. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed that will track a particular tag if you want to monitor YouTube for videos associated with specific topics. I did this a few years ago to keep up with videos posted by students, locals, and visitors to my institution and it worked out great!
• EDUCAUSE, our incredible higher education IT professional association, offers an RSS feed for the jobs that are posted to their website. As an educator with one foot in the world of IT, it’s very helpful for me to be able to keep up with the real trends in higher ed IT. If I were active in the job market this would be an incredible resource!
• Project MUSE, an online collection of scholarly journals, offers several RSS feeds. In particular, they offer feeds associated with journals they host. Since they host the Journal of College Student Development, you can subscribe to this feed and you’ll not only know when a new issue has been released but you’ll also be sent the table of contents.
• US Government agencies and departments as varied as the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Department of Homeland Security, and the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) offer RSS feeds with updates and news. Our tax money at work (if you’re American)!
• Finally, an example really far afield: The Grammy Award-winning band Nine Inch Nails not only allows people to download and remix their music but they offer RSS feeds that publish the highest rated songs, newest remixes, and general news. These are great examples of dynamic RSS feeds that are created automatically based on fans’ feedback and active participation.

Discovery Exercise

1. Explore some of the links and tools above.
2. Create a blog post or comment below about your experience. Which RSS feeds appear to be most helpful to you? Are any of them inspirational or thought-provoking?