‘Pimping’ the RSS with Yahoo Pipes
17 04 2007While working out at the gym, I listened to a podcast. Steve Dembo, a wizard of educational technology and most things digital, mentioned Pipes. Now, when he said the word, I was standing in front of the water cooler. Pipes? I mumbled. Whatever!
When I got home, and typed in pipes and yahoo into Google, and pulled up the site, well, I am hooked. Not sure how it does it, but it works like magic. It reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows- Pimp My Ride. Pipes of the ‘parts’ and merges them into a ‘pimped out new ride’.
This could be a great learning task for computer science students in high school. I am thinking about setting up a Pipe that would search of environmental issues in new sources. In the fall, we have a class called North Carolina Wildlife. In an effort to expose my students to all the controversy generated by topics like landfills, live stock farming, waste disposal, global warming, beach erosion, and much more, the do current events each week. Teaching students to efficiently searching the Internet for current event topics is a challenge. Most students find one source and turn in the same type current event each time. Maybe it would be interesting to set up a Pipe and let them find their own feeds and customize them.
Categories : Educational Technology

