Hey, leave my feed out of it.

Via TechCrunch: Bloglines has proposed a standard for RSS feeds that will allow publishers to keep their feeds out of search engines.

Why should you care? So if you want your students’ weblogs to be public and subscribable, but kept out of search engines to prevent completely random discovery, you have that option now.

Before this, even if you had a completely private blog, it was still possible for search engines (like the one built into Bloglines) to find your feed, essentially making your private blog completely public. IF even one person subscribed to your private blog via Bloglines, you could be found by users’ searches.

Assuming that people buy in to this new standard, you’d have the ability to opt out of that sort of publicity.

While this does NOT in any way alleviate us the responsbile to teach our students how to interact appropriately in public situations on the internet, it DOES provide us with more control over the way we do it. Opting out is not a solution. It provides us more options while students learn about appropriate use. Start off with private feeds and then move to public once they are ready.

One other note, this isn’t actually making your feed private, it’s just making it not appear in a search engine. “If a blogger creates a post, but it can’t be found by search engines, does it make any noise?”

technorati tags:bloglines, rss, education, aggregators, feeds

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2 Comments

Andrew Pass
8/5/2006

I think it would be great if students could post without the possibility of their writing being picked up by strangers. This would certainly create more safety. At the same time I hope that MSM cannot opt out of RSS. RSS makes it so convenient to stay informed. However, I’d give up the RSS to MSM in a heartbeat for greater security.

Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html

Tony
10/10/2006

Hi! I need your opinion! Currently, I’m teaching Title I Reading. I’m up for a kindergarten job at the same school. I interview next week and I really hope to get it. It is between me and one other person! Anyways, I like Title I but there is talk about cutting some of those positions for next year and I would be very stable with a kindergarten job. Here is the question – the principal can choose to put the new teacher in this position ASAP or wait until next year. The class did have a long term sub but she got a contract so now they are having random subs. How hard is it to walk into a kindergarten room during the 2nd six weeks? I already know all the children because I do reading rotations with them. It is a well behaved class for the most part…there is always 1 or 2 children! I would love to have this class but I’m not sure what I should choose if I’m given the option…do I stay in Title for the remainder of the year? Or start kindergarten the week following the interview?
Thank you for your opinion.

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