BP4_2009111_RSS

I love information. I read the New York Times each day (the paper version via home delivery) and check Twitter for feeds ranging from Edutopia and New Scientist to Lance Armstrong (one of my heroes) and various friends. I love new information because what I'm good at is synthesizing information and using it to help educate. Not surprising, I'm loving RSS feeds. What I love most about them is that I have subscribed to organizations that I like to get information from and with the RSS, I can get the specific information I like delivered directly to me.

I'm not a teacher and in fact, I'm not employed full-time so I have chosen feeds that are important to me and where I am going. I have been a producer of an event called the International Achievement Summit for the past 18 years. In those years, I have met and worked with outstanding achievers from all fields who have inspired me.

The first feed I'm following is from Tom Friedman, my favorite NYT columnist. I heard him speak several times for the Academy over the past few years including his thrilling presentation on The World is Flat when it was first published (see photo of myself with him above at the Achievement Summit 2007). That book and his presentation inspired me to pursue a path centered around education for the 21st century along with a panel discussion on education with his friend and another person I admire greatly, Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson (President of Rensselaer Polytechic Institute). I recently watched a podcast of The World is Flat 3.0 created for iTunesU at MIT (Free Open CourseWare) in April 2009. Friedman is my compass point - helping to set the path for where I need to go if I want to make a difference. What a wonderful thing to have his commentaries now delivered directly to me!

Another source of inspiration for me is the TED Conference. I have watched several videos and love the new ideas and mashing of information from disparate sources. That is what the world is about today. So I'm following this.

I fell in love with Edutopia in the first month of this master's degree when I did a literature review on Edutopia.com. I see George Lucas at every Academy of Achievement event, but I had no idea he had created this fabulous organization until I started this program. I follow Edutopia on Twitter and now I'm following their RSS.

There are several other related sources I have chosen to follow in Reader to help guide me in my studies and work. These three are all news feeds related to education. They include NPR Topics (both Technology and Education), BBC News in Education (for an "over the pond" point of view), MIT World, Educational Technology and NYT Education. All of these combined give me a daily feed of new information on education to be mashed and used for the creation of who knows what.