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7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT … ™
Web Syndication
Scenario
Professor Boyer is teaching a senior seminar called
1 What is it?
For print and broadcast media, syndication is the pro-
cess by which content from a single source is distributed in
Growing Food in the Cityscape, limited to 16 students. A multiple other venues, as when news produced by Reuters,
central part of the course is for each student to follow for example, is included in local news outlets. Web syndica-
current projects related to urban gardening. She in- tion applies the principles of discovery and distribution to
structs them to use whatever online tools and sources the online environment, with more producers of informa-
they find to develop streams of dynamic content, which tion, more formats for content, and more channels of distri-
will be available online—to others in the class and to the bution. Syndication in this context encompasses both the
broader community. production and consumption of content, and a growing
number of web users take advantage of web syndication to
Jake starts his collection by subscribing to a blog feed
organize and filter content from social media, blogs, news,
from a local nursery, posting it on a Tumblr page he’s
and other sources. They can feed selected content into vari-
using for the course. Other students use different social
ous applications on phones, tablets, or e-readers and into
networking tools for their work, and some students build
locations such as websites or social media, even including
their own web pages. Amy, an avid photographer, has a
aggregated “feeds of feeds.” In this way, common online ac-
Flickr page where she posts pictures she takes of urban
tivities such as “liking” people or organizations or “follow-
gardens, and several of the students subscribe to that
ing” keywords or hashtags also become forms of syndication,
page. Kyle maintains a blog about an indoor herb garden
allowing individuals to create personally curated content
in his apartment, and Jake features that blog on his page,
streams. Syndication becomes a way to streamline content,
which focuses on individual gardening. Other students
collect data, and re-share with others.
highlight community gardens, and still others find a par-
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ticular interest in using fruit trees in municipal landscap-
ing. The syndicated feeds are automatically refreshed How does it work?
whenever new content is added, and the students contin- Web syndication offers content producers and readers
ually find new sources of information and meet new peo- a flexible, powerful, and largely automated means of access-
ple in the community, creating a web of connected, ing and distributing content on the web. Blogs, tweets, social
engaged individuals. bookmarking sites, even online forums such as Reddit can
From the students’ work, Boyer chooses content for a be made to produce a “feed,” an automatic update service
class-wide web page that covers the various topics that that readers can subscribe to in many different ways—from
students have chosen to pursue. Various resources are e-mail to RSS readers to websites set up to aggregate feeds,
represented, including how-to blogs, photos and videos, including another website. RSS feeds were early examples of
web syndication, popularized by such sites as the New York
Pinterest pages, and even locavore cooking sites. A scroll-
Times, which generated individual RSS feeds for most of its
ing display uses Twitter hashtags to show updates about
internal sections. Readers, in turn, could assemble a custom-
workshops at the local demo garden, plant sales, and
ized set of the newspaper’s feeds, which then presented sto-
open houses at public gardens.
ries tailored to the interests of the subscriber. Other forms
Over the semester, the students’ use of web syndication of syndication and subscription have emerged, with sites
tools shows them how to learn and apply knowledge in a such as Tumblr and Twitter, in which one “follows” a blogger
context of continually evolving information. They discov- or Twitter user to see all updates automatically. Some users
er obscure and remarkable resources and become dis- will find “reblogging” or “re-pinning” easier than using RSS
criminating consumers of what they find online. feeds, though these techniques are typically specific to one
platform only, as in Facebook’s “share” feature.
E D U C AU S E L E A R N I N G I N I T I AT I V E
educause.edu/ELI | ELI 7 Things You Should Know About ... ™
7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT … ™ APRIL 2014
Web Syndication
3 Who’s doing it?
The 20th-Century Russia website at Virginia Tech is a
recent history project that makes elegant use of syndication
5 What are the downsides?
The opportunity to select one’s own news suppliers,
particularly when that selection is based on shared interests
in an academic context. The site offers a media-rich maga- with like-minded others, can serve as an echo chamber rath-
zine layout, with blogs, source links, a Twitter feed, and edi- er than represent a broad view. Moreover, news postings
torial commentary, all relating to research into Russia in the made in near–real time may lack expert vetting or interpre-
1900s. During the course that spawned the project, content tation. Web users often find it difficult to validate a resource
on a “motherblog” was syndicated from 38 individual stu- or trace the provenance of information, especially when syn-
dent blogs that doubled as student portfolios. To develop dicated information has been redesigned to look native to a
their own content, students used open-access multimedia recipient site. As a result, the tools of web syndication might
collections that included primary resources for the era. Each create new challenges for properly crediting sources, raising
week a new edition curated content from the student blogs, intellectual property concerns.
with particularly intriguing posts highlighted. The approach
6 Where is it going?
encouraged engagement and content development as stu-
dents blogged or tweeted in their own online spaces.
Syndication technologies allowed individual composition As web syndication becomes more broadly understood
spaces and practices to be aggregated within a dynamically and used, the proliferation of sharing options promises a
updated central curation point. At the University of Notre more complex future ecosystem. There will be more pieces of
Dame, in a course called Introduction to the First information available and more and better ways of joining
Amendment: Freedom of Expression in the Digital Age, stu- that information, allowing pieces to fit together more effec-
dents pull in course material from multiple sources, sub- tively and enabling increasingly complex conversations
scribing to information feeds rather than using a traditional among consumers. New tools should also simplify and extend
textbook. In this case, students use hashtags and other tools syndication and help content providers manage an ever-broad-
of web syndication to compile the reading material and other ening stream of updates. Just as some instructors today add
resources for the course and, sometimes, to continue discus- notes to e-texts, soon students may routinely highlight passag-
sion on Twitter outside class. es in the course text, post queries for the instructor, and share
comments with classmates, thus initiating discussions that can
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move seamlessly to a class forum or to social media and poten-
Why is it significant? tially into learning environments much larger than a single
Web-based syndication tools have changed the dy- course or a single university. Content will become more inter-
namic of information gathering. The one-to-many syndi- active, and the bright line that once divided production from
cation model, popularized by news organizations in the consumption will become increasingly blurred.
20th century, gave end users access to only those syndicat-
7 What are the implications for
ed articles presented by the supplier and selected by the
local news editor. The web has enabled broader access,
including news close to the source, sometimes from eye-
teaching and learning?
witnesses. At the same time, information consumers can Web syndication allows students to become producers of knowl-
gather, repurpose, and share resources quickly and fluidly edge as well as consumers of information, and it may also en-
and can, if they choose, restyle and re-present informa- courage them to think more creatively and develop complex
tion via their own blogs, websites, or other online venues. analytical skills. Students who build their own information net-
The result is a many-to-many model in which individuals works are likely to be mindful of the content choices they make
can serve as curators for colleagues and friends. In aca- and circumspect about the ways they acquire and distribute
deme, instructors and learners can harness these web that content. Students may rely less on textbooks and explore
tools to accommodate specific learning requirements, us- more fully what constitutes useful curation, and courses that
ing David Weinberger’s notion of the web as “small pieces use web syndication have the potential to cultivate in students
loosely joined” as a guiding principle to create resources the capacity to critically evaluate content. Information coming
that are infinitely configurable and can be tailored to fit from a wide variety of sources may broaden student learning
any learning need. horizons as it inspires discovery, curation, and sharing.
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