I have been wondering about RSS feeds since I heard David Warlick at a Kent ISD workshop last fall. At first the idea of being able to stream feeds of my choice to my homepage or developing a professional learning network using feeds seemed appealing.
However, there was one aspect of the RSS feed concept that was of concern to me...an aspect that possibly was both a strength and a weakness of this "thing". That aspect was the "selectivity" that the tool allows. It would be very easy for someone to become very narrrow in the scope of ideas that they are reading. One of the strengths of our traditional news system is that there were many voices and opinions represented in what the average person ingested on a day to day basis. There was a wide marketplace of ideas and forums for comment. Now, with the help of RSS feeds, a person can choose to read only those that agree with them, hear only what they want to hear, and ignore opposing viewpoints. While there is still a wide range of thoughts and opinions on the web (some credible and some not), RSS feeds make it easy for someone to hear / see only what they want to hear / see. I suppose that people have always been somewhat selective in their sources of information, but tools like RSS feeds make it all that much easier.
I was pleased to see that one of the other members of this course indicated in their post that they intentionally subscribed to opposing viewpoints. Depending on the nature of the topics of the feeds that one subscribes to, I think it would be important to seek to achieve balance in the input one is receiving.
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