Searching, Searching, Searching - Lost

Often I sit with my laptop and attempt to gather useful information for either my students, my curriculum, or my grad class. I have gotten in the habit of writing down "focus" topics on my notepad so that if fifteen, thirty, sixty minutes later I find myself off on a tangent of a tangent, I can look back at my "focus" and get my butt back in gear. Many times I find that in all my searching I become lost - off topic and/or overwhelmed with all the information related to my topic. Through scanning I can usually quickly determine the relevance (or lack of relevance) to my focus and either save, copy and paste, or print my findings. Other than relevance, I also look at the source - there are too many sites available that are simply not valid or credible. (I think this is a huge downfall of students using the Internet - they truly think if they find it on the computer it must not only be reliable but completely accurate as well). When I am done I usually find myself with a pile of stuff that I am not entirely sure what to do with - so I usually do little to nothing. There is not categorizing or organizing other than the paper files go in a folder labelled accordingly and the electronic files are also in a folder - electronically saved. This really creates so much work and so much information that I usually end up feeling like I have more work once I am done with the Internet than before I started.
If I find myself in this pattern, I can only imagine the feeling of being lost and overwhelmed mys students must experience. On top of these feelings, I also imagine that though I have some very bright students, many of them are not practiced in scanning and ascertaining the importance/relevance of the material they have. Also, I know to copy or save any reference information so I can create a bibliography or access the information again - most of my students have no idea to do that - they believe since they have the link printed at the top of the page that they are good to go.
For the reasons above I am very excited (yet nervous) about using RSS feeds. The idea that the information will come to me, or my students, is wonderful. Reading through the packets and pages about RSS feeds, I find my mind expanding and imagining a whole new experience for my research papers and author studies. I had NO IDEA that RSS feeds existed or that they were actually user friendly (somewhat-I still don't use them enough). That you can use RSS feeds for blogs, websites, news sites and other sources is excellent and I want to become proficient with them. What interests me the most is the feeds for bookmarks. and the combining of feeds. The idea that I can monitor, watch, help with student research using feeds is an ideal option for my classroom. I have until springtime to get these down to help my students and give them a powerful tool that will guide them in years to come. I imagine that RSS feeds will be one of those things - like cell phones - how did we ever do things without them before?
I just don't fully get how to set them up...but like most things in technology - playing and spending the time working on understanding is the only way to do it...

It appears that RSS feeds would greatly enhance my student's research process. They may feel hesitant, as I do, but hopefully they will see the benefits and overcome thier hesitation...as I need to do.