Apparently May 1st is also "official" RSS day. As I travel around speaking to educators and parents, I find that RSS is still a huge mystery to the great majority of people. I suspect RSS is one of the world's best kept secrets. So many people don't even know RSS exists. And of the people that do, many have some foggy notion about what it might be. I must admit, I had a bit of difficulty getting my head around the power of this technology myself.

Resources to Learn About RSS
So, in honor of RSS Day, here are some easy-to-get-your-head-around resources that really help clear up some of the fog of mystery.

Let's start with a short, easy Common Craft video about RSS. And Back in Skinny Jeans has a great post entitled, How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way, that's an easy and informative read. Wesley Fryer, over at Moving at the Speed of Creativity, wrote a post explaining RSS back in 2005. (And if you still want to see more videos on RSS, check out these search results for "RSS" video on YouTube and "what is rss" on TeacherTube.)

I've written about RSS a few times over the years. You can check out these posts as well if you like:
More on the Power of RSS and NetNewsWire (2/1//2008)
Cool Tool Alert: NetNewsWire (2/3/2008)
Under the Hood of Our New Website (6/2006)
How to Subscribe to MabryOnline.org through RSS (6/2006)

Saving the Best for Last
And three other sources for your RSS learning pleasure: these are actually RSS aggregators. Don't worry if you're not sure what that means. Just go to either type (online or download) or both of these, and start using their aggregator. As you use it, and each resource will guide you through how to do so, you will begin to understand more about RSS. After all, we really learn by doing!

Bloglines (setup your free online account)
NetNewWire (Mac free download) or FeedDemon (Windows free download)
Google Reader (setup your free online account)

I know you're busy. Your time is jammed full. But RSS is just too powerful to ignore! It's an efficiency tool. RSS can help you find what you're interested in much faster by having it automatically come to you! Start learning it today!

A Great New Twist
My blogging system allows me to create an RSS feed from a search request on my blog. So, in the search field at the left, I typed in "RSS." All of the posts I have published that contain "RSS" appear. In the sidebar on the search results page is Subscribe to feed. The search field created an RSS feed for the search results!

What does that mean? Well, you could subscribe to the search results. In other words, if you subscribed to the search result for "RSS," from now on, anytime I publish a post that includes "RSS" that post would go straight to your RSS aggregator. Nifty little thing that RSS feed!