How to Drink from a Firehose Without Drowning, or Online Current Awareness Made Less Difficult

Abstract

Once upon a time, the law changed gently; actively keeping ahead of your students was unnecessary. Now you can have up to the minute information on your desktop. In fact, now you must have up to the minute information on your desktop, because your students are following "blawgs" and sub-scribing to "feeds" and reading "tweets". While you are asking that elegant Socratic question, they are reading an appellate opinion that had not been published when class began. Some of your peers - and rivals - are doing the same. No matter how unnatural they seem, we must force ourselves to learn how to use the Internet tools that have accelerated current awareness to the point of seeming madness. It is difficult, confusing, frustrating - and so, so important. This paper attempts to smooth your path towards online awareness sanity in the Twenty-First Century.

Keywords: blog, RSS, feedreader, heuristics, electronic mailing list, print, periodical, alert, notes

JEL Classification: K00