Number 3: RSS Feeds

23 Things on a Stick asks:

• What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
• How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?

To the left, you will see some links to fellow classmates' blogs that I added to my RSS account with Google Reader. RSS Feeds are a good example of something that, as a Millenial, I know about, but I've never tried... And holy moly I was confused. I use Gmail and Google Documents (great for the student on the go who works on sometimes up to three or four different computers in one day), so I thought I would just use Google Reader. Someone I chat with frequently on GChat already had a Reader account set up, and suddenly all these things he'd shared were visible to me. Whoa! Too much information! All at once! I understood easily enough how to add subscriptions... But then what? I added them to the blog, but I think I just added links to individual posts, rather than the entire blogs of my fellow students. I'm confused. This will all need more sorting out later. Maybe it will make sense the more I just stare at it.

So, this was overwhelming. So far, I'm not crazy about it. I don't even really like or use tabbed browsing, much less the idea of seeing stories from multiple sites in one window. For now, I don't anticipate using this technology for either school or work. It feels like one too many bricks in the wall of information overload that is my life.