One of the principal developments of Web 2.0 is the development RSS, or Real Simple Sindication.  Basically RSS is the content, stripped of most design, from sites such as blogs and other sites that have frequently updated content.  This allows people with RSS readers to view only the content they haven’t already read from a large number of sites in one location.  This becomes a serious time saver once you’ve started reading blogs and using other Web 2.0 sites such as Flickr and Delicious.

One of these RSS readers, Netvibes, is particularly good for language learners, as it provides suggestions for RSS feeds based on a location.  The user can, for example, provide their location as Bremen, Germany and specify their interests as news and technology.  A portal can then be created that includes their Gmail and Facebook along with stories from the German news, the weather in Bremen, and German technology magazines.  If the class is blogging as well, the portal can be used to keep track of the other students’ blogs in class.  For the instructor, it provides an easy way  to structure and view the content being created by students in different locations.

Those interested, feel free to stop down and I’ll show you some examples.