Using push technology

I hadn't come across push technology before really until this week; I had come across the term but didn't really know what it meant. However, learning about the differences between push and pull technology wass enlightening and has helped me make sense of RSS feeds, Facebook notifications etc. So what is 'push technology'? Push technology is essentially a way of information being pushed onto the user without the need for him/her to actively search for information. Pull technology on the other hand is the more traditional approach; when you search for information on the web, e.g. using a search engine such as Google or Bing, you are looking for specific information. You need to know exactly what information you are looking for and it is time-consuming and tedious to continually search for information on a regular basis. Push technology enables users to access information as soon as it becomes available. In other words, the information is pushed onto you. One way of using push technology in the classroom is to create an online paper; I did this using paper li. This is very easy to do and looks as though you have spent a lot more effort creating something than you have. Paper li is a curation platform which allows you to select resources from Twitter, Youtube etc. and turn them into an online paper. I wanted to create a kind of online further education online journal and selected resources from EducationGuardian, the TES and twitter users who always post practical ideas. The paper is updated automatically and daily, and provides you with an interesting read. The only downside I can really see is that the paper can appear a bit chaotic. You have had no control over the selection of the articles so not all of them will be useful. Still, overall, I found the exercise very worthwhile. The latest edition of the paper is provided below.