My organization has an article on this topic. http://www.techsoup.org/howto/articles/internet/page1643.cfm?show=list&sort=first?cg=searchterms&sg=RSS
Malin Coleridge Business Analyst TechSoup.org (a program of CompuMentor) Tel: (415) 633-9346 Fax: (415) 512-9400 http://www.techsoup.org http://www.compumentor.org -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Katy Pearce Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 8:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [DDN] article in progress - "what is rss and how will itbenefit me?" Oddly enough, I blogged about this today: http://youngcaucasus.neweurasia.net/?p=30 This was specifically written for non-native English speaking teenagers with limited tech backgrounds. It is about as basic as it gets. Cheers, Katy Quoting Claude Almansi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > Phil Shapiro wrote: >> hi DDN community - >> i'm working on a new article that explains what RSS is and >> how it benefits >> people. the beginning of the article appears at >> http://whatisrss.blogspot.com/ >> >> i have some ideas of what i'll be including in this article >> next, but i >> need help getting more examples of how RSS brings benefits into >> peoples' lives. >> >> if you can think of some examples of how you or others use >> RSS, thanks >> for sending them over this way. the more examples i can assemble, the more >> people will be able to understand what RSS is about. the >> article i'm assembling is in the public domain and will be freely >> redistributable for any purpose -- including reprinting in >> newsletters, etc. thanks in advance. >> >> phil shapiro >> washington dc >> > > Hi Phil > > I don't know if meant "sending ideas this way" to you personally or > to the DDN list, but I believe it would make an interesting > discussion topic, because: > > I first heard of RSS on the DDN discussion list: you, Andy, Taran, > other tech-minded people posted about it. As usual, I was slow on the > uptake, only realizing after half a dozen messages that wow, this ws > really something revolutionary and I'd better make an effort to > understand what it would change and how. > > Then I tried to bring the concept home to the other people at ADISI > www.adisi.ch: we are meant to concentrate on the divulgation of > "cyberlaw" issues, but in a way, cyberlaw is not autonomous, it's > about how to apply law to things happening in the cyberworld. And > really simple syndication is certainly something big happening in > the cyberworld, with legal conundrums attached. About authorship and > authors' rights, for instance. > > One problem in trying to make the others at ADISI understand the > momentous importance of RSS was language: the vivid experiences > exchanged on the DDN list were in English, and English is the 3rd or > 4th language for the members of the ADISI committe (Italian native, > then French, German). > > To overcome this language barrier, with Mahdi Mezher, the IT pro at > ADISI, I wrote a blog entry on 11/9/04, "Firefox 1.0 è uscito oggi. > Novità: il "newsreader incorporato"" (Firefox 1.0. came out today. > New feature: embedded newsreader" > <http://adisi.livejournal.com/20329.html>, about live bookmarks in > Firefox. The others politely said it was very interesting, - staring > blankly. But OK, the started using the live bookmarks in Firefox and > bagan to get interested. > > So I made www.bloglines.com/public/adisi, and the others seemed a bit > more impressed, being able to view all those dynamic sites in real > time and in one page (I must confess that I only just understood what > the clip blog that goes with it, http://www.bloglines.com/blog/ADISI, > is about and how it works). > > And then you tech-aware people at DDN moved on to podcasts. It was > damned thrilling, but I had learned from the experience trying to > convey the importance of RSS feeds. So I first made a very crude > podcast at http://podhost.de before shooting my mouth about it here. > > It worked. As did the fact that our translation of Tod Maffin's "How > podcasting will save radio" was immediately taken up by Indymedia > <http://switzerland.indymedia.org/demix/2005/02/30216.shtml> :-D . > Mahdi and I got interviewed about podcasts at RSI, the > Italian-language national radio. Now RSI has started having podcasts > too. > > We are also making a podcast for our own radio broadcast, Tam Tam > <http://feeds.feedburner.com/adisi/tamtam>. And by making I mean > making it by hand, adding an XML sausage to the string for each new > instalment. We make code mistakes, take down the file, try to find > where we went wrong, put it back up, take it down again... > > This handmade podcast doesn't make sense, per se: Tam Tam is a > bi-weekly thing, and we could just have gone on putting the MP3's in > the broadcast list (<http://www.adisi.ch/tamtam/lista2006.html> for > this year's). I feel like the bloke crouching in Vaucansson's > chess-player's "automat": that's not how normal folks do podcasts: > they have a program that does the sausage-adding for them, like the > one I first used at podhost.de. > > We really started it as an example in Italian. There are light music > podcasts, of course, but we wanted to show that it can also be used > for conveying info, and in education. > > But as to real divulgation, beyond people already curious about tech, > it ain't easy. Here, blogs are still considered as kids' stuff. Some > education researchers are starting to advocate using blogs in > teaching, but - with the notable exception of prof. Lorenzo Cantoni's > http://newmine.blogspot.com - aren't keeping one themselves. > > And teachers, not being told about RSS possibilities, feel daunted at > the prospect of following several blogs. And they are not told about > RSS possibilities because the teachers' trainers don't know about > them. In part because of the language problem, which in turn implies > a mediation instead of direct access to debates about tech > innovation. Or rather: about the uses and potential of tech > innovation, as happens here on the DDN list. > > Media could do more. At RSR, the French-speaking national radio, > Jean-Olivier Pain has a hilarious and bloody well-informed broadcast > about IT innovation, "La capsule de Pain" every morning from Monday > to Friday: > <http://info.rsr.ch/fr/rsr.html?programId=110451&bcItemName=capsule_multimedia&rubricId=3500&contentDisplay=last_five&siteSect=1000> > (1). With a podcast and a help page about > podcasting. > > It doesn't quite work the same way in the Italian-speaking part. RSI > does have podcasts, but it doesn't have a general RSS feed, whereas > RSR has one. Again, a language issue: English is far more widespread > in French-speaking Switzerland than here. There are other factors too > (RSI has a smaller budget, for instance), but access to info in > English seems to be the main one. > > And it's a sorry paradox, because Italian speakers, being a minority > and fairly isolated geographically from the rest of Switzerland, have > an even greater need for the advantages of IT innovations such as RSS > feeds. > > (1) I wish our national broadcasting corporation would find a way to > produce meaningful URLs - shorter one for La capsule de Pain: > <http://tinyurl.com/a3uuz>. > > Best > > Claude > > Claude Almansi > Castione, Switzerland > www.adisi.ch > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list > DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org > http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide > To unsubscribe, send a message to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in > the body of the message. > > > _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
