RSS

Quick links:

Will Richardson has written a Quick Start Guide to RSS for Educators here (pdf).

Using Bloglines:

http://preetamrai.com/weblog/archives/2005/04/25/bloglines-how-to-keep-track-of-hundreds-of-blogs-and-some-news-and-some-podcasts-and-some-flickrs-photos-etc-etc/

Embedding RSS feeds into a webpage: http://incsub.org/feed2js/

What's all the fuss about?

You can use RSS to keep up-to-date yourself, which is fantastic, and you can even use it to make your webpages change on a regular basis with no effort on your part.

Will Richardson has written a Quick Start Guide to RSS for Educators here (pdf).

Terms

RSS: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary - basically information from a website in a particular format

Aggregator/ Reader: a service either web based or desktop based that displays RSS feeds. This service picks up new items from your subscription lists.

Subscriptions: the RSS feeds that you have added to your RSS reader.

Items: sometimes a post from a blog, a news headline, an item from a database etc.

Using RSS readers/ aggregators to keep up-to-date

There is a free web-based option called Bloglines, which is a RSS aggregator that you can access from any Internet connection, much better if you work at more than one computer. This one will even make recommendations about sites you might like to add to your subscription list, based on the ones you have selected already. The beauty of an aggregator is that you don't have to remember to go and check lots of blogs on a regular basis, the new items in each blog will be collated for you. Imagine you encourage your students to set up blogs as reflection journals, or an expert in your field writes on an occasional basis, you don't need to go looking, it will be pulled into your account for you.

If you find you forget to check on a regular basis, there's even a 'notifier' program that will tell you when there's new content on a blog. So imagine your students update their blog - You don't have to go check all of them, Notifier will tell you! Bloglines is the RSS aggregator I use. An alternative is Feedreader which is also available for free download at http://www.feedreader.com/ which is "a lightweight open-source aggregator that supports all major RSS formats. It works under Windows 95 and later versions" (from their website)

There are a number of good tutorials available on the web about using Bloglines. This one from Preetam Rai is my current favourite:

http://preetamrai.com/weblog/archives/2005/04/25/bloglines-how-to-keep-track-of-hundreds-of-blogs-and-some-news-and-some-podcasts-and-some-flickrs-photos-etc-etc/

Where do you find relevant RSS or XML feeds?

If you're looking for RSS/XML feeds in the field of education and technology you can't go past Stephen Downes' Edu_RSS portal which has dozens to choose from, also check out EdNA's RSS Services page. At the EdNA site you can save a Search as an RSS feed - this way you won't miss out on new resources that may be available for your areas of interest. Do a search using your keywords, and then find the "Get these results in RSS Format" link. Copy and paste this into your subscriptions. Refer to the help files for your aggregator if needed.

Some starting places to look for RSS feeds that you might read using your aggregator:

Bloglines has an inbuilt search function.

*None of these come particularly recommended, I just googled 'RSS feed list'

Syndic8 http://www.syndic8.com/

FeedSweep http://www.howdev.com/services/feedsweep/

Also if you have a website you check regularly see if it has an orange RSS button like this: . This means that a RSS feed is available to add to your aggregator. If you click on the link you get the actual page - What you need to do is right click on the link, Copy its location and add that to your subscribed feeds. Look in the help files for your aggregator for exactly how to do this.

Using RSS in your webpages

This is what can be really useful for building online resources because you can do things like this:

-------------

Recent News from the VET Sector, from www.edna.edu.au

-------------

These items are drawn directly from the EdNA website, and display the latest 3 items EdNA has listed in the VET sector news. You could apply a similar approach from an industry website which has regular new material. Many websites now have a RSS or XML button which indicates they can provide information in a format for displaying in this way.

Code to achieve the above is

</noscript>

Want to include a newsfeed on your own Webpage/ Online Course Pages?

Alan Levine at Maricopa Community College has developed a nifty tool for doing just this. Full, easy to follow instructions are available from http://incsub.org/feed2js/ (Australian mirror). You don't need access to any fancy software or a webserver, you just need to know how to copy and paste some text into a html page. On the 'More' page of that website there are also links to other similar services you might like to consider. Follow the full instructions provided at http://incsub.org/feed2js/

Try pasting the code that is generated into a WebCT (or other LMS) text-block and amaze your students with the new items you keep providing.

Speed Limit

Limit the number of items that you have listed as they can slow down the loading of the webpage. Or try including them further down the page. You don't want to keep people waiting for a webpage to load, any more than you'd expect them to wait ages for a picture. Also experiment with the length of the item you include, and whether or not you need to include dates etc.

Help!!

One of the great things about blogs and RSS software is the user communities that emerge around them. As a first point of call, try help information or an online user manual - you'll find links from the software homepage in most cases.

Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/

Bloglines Help: http://www.bloglines.com/help/faq

That's all folks - any questions? Drop me a line at kirsty dot sharp at tafe dot tas dot edu dot au

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