The Incredible Power of RSS Feeds

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The Incredible Power of RSS Feeds

• Norma Smith
• Instructional Technology
• ESC Region XI

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Understanding RSS Feeds

• RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple
  Syndication
• Sites generate a behind-the-scenes code in a
  language similar to HTML called XML.
• http//cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html
• This code, usually referred to as a "feed" (as in
  "news feed,") makes RSS possible for readers to
  "subscribe" to the content that is created on a
  particular site so they no longer have to visit
  the site itself to get new information.
• The content comes to you instead of you going to
  get it,
• Hence Real Simple Syndication

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What Kind of Content?

• Usually, content that is updated regularly such
  as
• Newspapers
• Journals/ Magazines
• Blogs
• Social Networking Sites
• Picture Sites
• Movies
• Others

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Why Go Get Content?

• The amount of information is overwhelming.
• Knowledge and information used to be
  scarce...that's what our education system was
  built upon.
• No more (MIT)
• knowledge used to be hard or unchanging...but
  these days, knowledge is soft
• (Wikipedia)

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• How do we cope with this information?
• How do we structure what we read and view?
• How do we help our students structure their
  reading and research?
• How do we model new literacy?

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Why Learn and Use Feeds?

• Amy Gehran (Contentious) writes
• The most effective, lasting way to adapt your
  online-media mindset, habits, and priorities is
  to actually use these skills not just know
  about them in a theoretical senseexperience
  itself the doing is what opens peoples
  minds enough that they make significant changes
  in how they use media to inform and engage with
  others... the highly interconnected, engaged,
  conversational nature of todays online media is
  a matter of experience

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http//www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20061225,0
0.html
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RSS Aggregators
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Understand News Aggregators

• The aggregator (software)
• checks the feeds you subscribe to, usually every
  hour,
• collects all the new content from those sites
  you are subscribed to and
• Then, when youre ready,you open up it up to
  read the individual stories, file them for later
  use, click through to the site itself, or delete
  them if theyre not relevant.
• In other words, you check one site instead of
  30not a bad tradeoff for a typically harried
  teacher.

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Kinds of RSS Aggregators

• Desktop IE7
• Online
• Google Reader
• Yahoo Mail
• Bloglines
• Email programs

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Using IE7 Local Reader

• Feeds Settings Internet Options, Contents
• To Read
• Click Favorites Center Star
• Click Feeds
• Select
• To manage Feeds
• Drag to folders
• Right Click to create or delete Folders

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To Add Feeds

• IE 7 Feeds are dynamic
• Easiest example
• Go to sportsillustrated.com
• Tool Bar Orange Icon lights up
• Click
• Click subscribe to this feed
• Organize
• Easy example
• Go to http//www.esc11.net
• Click on Feeds icon on the page
• Scroll down and copy/paste the URL for the feed
  in the toolbar
• Click subscribe to this feed
• Practice on interesting feeds

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If No Icon, Look for.

• subscribe
• syndicate
• feed
• rss
• xml
• atom

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Finding Feeds

• Use a Search engine and look around
• www.google.com
• Use a Blog search engine
• http//technorati.com/
• http//blogsearch.google.com
• To find news,
• Google

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Cool Feeds to Explore Will Richardson

• Weather via RSS http//www.rssweather.com/
• Word of the day via RSS http//dictionary.refere
  nce.com/wordoftheday/
• eBay via RSS http//www.rssauction.com/

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An Online AggregatorGoogle Reader

• Go to http//reader.google.com
• View Mine
• Log in or get an account
• Explore
• Read feeds
• Delete what you dont want
• Look under Add subscriptions, Browse add some
  you want
• Click Add subscriptions and let google reader
  search for some feeds

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• Whoop-te-doos
• Starred items
• Shared items
• Trends

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Set up Folders for your Selected Areas

• Folders are synonymous with Tags
• Click on manage subscriptions
• Click on drop down box to put subscription in a
  folder/tag
• To add a new folder/tag, when you subscribe, type
  in the name of the tag
• To delete a tag, select, click delete

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More Cool Feeds Norma Smith

• EdTech Will Richardson
• http//www.weblogg-ed.com/
• EdTech Miguel Guhlin
• http//www.weblogg-ed.com/
• EdTech eschool News
• http//www.eschoolnews.com/
• Interesting site
• www.about.com

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Some More Sample Feeds

• Finance Both Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance
  let you get finance news updates for specific
  companies and stocks. To receive stock quotes
  (only for some stocks), use NASDAQ's feeds.
• Weather The Weather Channel, WeatherBug,
  NOAA's National Weather Service.
• Classifieds craigslist and Oodle.com offer feeds
  for all of their listings. Just look for the
  orange "RSS" link at the bottom of any results
  page . Similarly, eBay.
• Package tracking To track packages that have
  been sent by UPS, FedEx, USPS or DHL/Airborne,
  use isnoop.net's universal package tracking or
  simpletracking.com.
• Social networking Facebook offers feeds for many
  of its features notifications, status updates,
  and friends' posted items in Reader. Twitter fans
  can get RSS feeds for many of its pages.
• Shopping Amazon has feeds for the latest popular
  products as well as wish lists (look for the
  orange feed icon). Many other shopping web sites
  offer feeds, including Yahoo! Shopping, MSN
  Shopping, and NexTag.
• Saved searches Google Blog Search, Google News
  and most Yahoo! sites (among others) let you
  subscribe to search results as feeds. This way,
  if you want to monitor a topic, you don't have to
  keep running searches over and over again.

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Manage Subscriptions

• Select all or none
• Place subsriptions in folders/tags
• Can be in more than one for organization
• Can delete subscriptions See Trends

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DemoMonitor Student Blogs

• Every student has a blog with RSS feed
• Set up a folder and subscribe
• Know when additions are made
• Same with web pages
• Subscribe to all ESC XI IT blogs

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DemoStudents Monitor Teacher Blog

• Teacher has a blog
• Students each subscribe with an online aggregator
• Students know when something new is up

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Student Research with RSS

• New Searches
• Googlealerts.com/
• Get an account
• Up to 3 alerts
• Feed settings
• User settings

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Design Your own Personal Curriculum

• List three areas that you want to be
  knowledgeable and current in (hobbies or
  interests)
• Ex.
• News
• Weather
• Sports
• Cross Stitching
• Professional

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On Google Reader

• Create these three folders
• Search to find feeds using
• Google RSS
• Technorati
• www.about.com
• GoogleAlerts
• other
• Start reading regularly

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RSS Negatives V Positives

• Amateur Researchers
• Poor tagging
• Something else to manage
• Dubious sites

• No spam
• Digital Native Friendly
• Free
• Simple to Use
• Easy to share
• Accessible anywhere
• Builds and Builds

http//www.slideshare.net/celliott/assembling-your
-web-20-toolbox
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