Thing 4: Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Storify

Before CPD23 I have not used any of these (Twitter, RSS, Storify) before and was very excited to have a reason to jump right in! I found setting up an account and getting started in all of them was so easy! Before I had trepidation about using them but no more, it's actually quite easy. I found some people to follow on twitter right away! And it was very simple to begin tweeting. 

RSS was always intimidating as the idea of endless steaming of knowledge was so scary! But its actually quite manageable as you can easily scan new info all in one place, which is extremely helpful! The only thing Google Reader is missing is the personal touches of the blogs themselves. 

The first time round we used Pushnote, which was the hardest of Thing 4 to get off the ground as you needed to know people by email or their Pushnote name. When your just starting this is not good enough. It needs a better search system, maybe by integrating browsing of options by categories of people/interests. While it's nice that it can integrate Twitter and FB feeds into one place it's not necessary for me, it doesn't seem worth while as I would still rather check and use each on their own. 

This time around we are using Storify instead of Pushnote. I had not used this one yet and found it an intriguing idea. This tool is very easy to use, just search and slide items of interest over to your story. I like this tool a lot. I think its a great tool to get people interested in journalism, news, and world events! And it can be used in many ways, as seen by Oprah's use of Storify for her book club. Scoop.it also looks like a great tool. I think these tools could be great for creating reader's advisory pages on selected topics, journalism clubs, and much more! I think it would also be a great tool to use with teens to get them involved with aggregating useful information for themselves and others about what they believe are important topics worth discussing.