I have a wide variety of interests. With these varied interests, it is not easy to stay abreast of emerging trends. That, of course, is one of the wonders of the blogosphere- a worldwide network of diverse people from diverse places with diverse interests, posting commentary, news, even creative works for the world to see. That is one step in the transformation. Now we need to add to the mix the magic of RSS feeds. Not long ago I had 20+ blogs that I would visit, one by one; checking to see what was new. That was quickly replaced with my use of Blogines and then Google Reader (integrated into my iGoogle home page). As you probably already know, these feed “aggregators” allow you to subscribe to multiple blogs and make it easy for you to track and read the most recent posts to each blog, all in one centralized location. The following picture is a screen capture of some of the most recent posts in my aggregator.
If I did not lose your attention already, please know that I have getting close to a point.
On what seems like a completely different topic, consider how the Internet has changed research over the past decade. When I was working on my dissertation, I could search dozens of databases, skim thousands of articles, and identify hundreds of pertinent sources, all from that uncomfortable $20 office chair in my makeshift home office. In many cases I could read and download full text articles from these online databases. I could also search dissertations on related topics from around the world, viewing most of them online for free (through my University subscription). When they were not freely available I could purchase a copy to be delivered digitally or by mail. I suspect that writing a dissertation twenty years ago would have been an entirely different experience, and this is without considering what it would be like to write a dissertation on a typewriter.
Now to the point…
What do RSS aggregators, databases, and dissertations have in common? I just had lunch with a friend and she filled me in on the connection. Did you know that you could subscribe to RSS feeds of recent journal articles and dissertations through ProQuest? This is amazing! Consider the possibilities for staying up-to-date and for teaching. I can now subscribe to an RSS feed through ProQuest on a topic of interest; perhaps “distance learning” or “educational technology.” Then any new dissertation or journal article related to that topic gets fed right into my Google Reader! Consider this, something that ProQuest demos on their site. I can create a living syllabus or resources section for a course. For each unit topic, I can pull in a list of the most recent articles or research on that topic, with direct access for my students. If you are interested, you can read more about this at the ProQuest web site.
