RSS For Educators

RSS for Educators Jennifer Carrier Dorman http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/RSS

What is RSS?

Depending on who you talk to, RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication

Web 1.0  Web 2.0

RSS – Really Simple Syndication http://www.edutopia.org/tech-teacher-RSS

Ask an Expert . . .

Excerpts from Will Richardson’s publication, RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators

http://snipurl.com/1w86t

Will’s Blog

http://weblogg-ed.com/

Will’s Book

http://snipurl.com/1w87c

What is RSS?

Blogs, podcasts, news sites, and an ever-growing number of other media site generate a behind-the-scenes code in a language similar to HTML called XML.

This code, usually referred to as a "feed," makes it possible for readers to "subscribe" to the content that is created on a particular website so they no longer have to visit the site itself to get it.

RSS Syndication

As is true with traditional syndication, the content comes to you instead of you going to get it, hence “Real Simple Syndication.”

Applications for RSS Feeds

An RSS aggregator checks the feeds you subscribe to and it collects all the new content from those sites you are subscribed to.

Then, when you’re ready, you open up your aggregator to read the individual stories, file them for later use, click through to the site itself, or delete them if they’re not relevant.

In other words, you check one site instead of dozens of individual websites

RSS in Plain English http://snipurl.com/1w8wi

Subscribing to RSS Feeds

Finding Feeds

Blogs, podcasts, news sites, and many other media services syndicate their content through RSS feeds

Options for Subscribing

Option 1- Manual Subscription

Right-click on the RSS or Atom link/icon and select Copy Link Location

Paste that feed URL into your RSS reader

Option 2 – Automatic Browser Subscription

Firefox

Internet Explorer 7

Automatic Subscribing in Firefox

Tools > Options

Click on the Feeds tab

Select your preferred RSS reader

Automatic Subscribing in IE7

Click on the Feed icon

Click subscribe to this feed

Select the folder and click subscribe

Automatic Subscribing in IE7

Read your subscriptions through IE7

Option 3: Automatic Feed Reader Subscriptions

Many sites now offer one-click subscriptions targeted to popular feed readers

Click on the icon for the reader you use and the subscription feed will automatically be added to your reader

RSS Aggregators Feed Readers

Bloglines

Save Time, Read it Your Way

View all your subscriptions by clicking on the My Feeds tab

Modify display preferences in feed Options

View articles by selecting from the links in your Feeds folder

Modify individual subscription options using the Edit feature

Choose a Notifier for Bloglines alerts

View Bloglines on your mobile device

Read Bloglines in your favorite language

http://www.bloglines.com/

Bloglines

What interests you?

Blogs , News , Podcasts and more

Weather forecasts

Package tracking

View the 200 Most Popular Feeds

Track future web articles by creating a search subscription

Bloglines

Subscribe to it

Subscribe with one click from your browser toolbar

Subscribe from search results

Look for RSS enabled sites with 'Subscribe with Bloglines' or XML/RSS buttons

If you don't see an RSS button, use the 'Add' link and enter the URL and Bloglines will find all available feeds for you.

Manage mailing list clutter by creating unique email addresses

Bloglines

Publish, Share & Save

Publish your own blog

Post a 'Subscribe with Bloglines' button on your blog

Share your blogroll

Email articles to any address using the 'Email This' feature

Save articles with the 'Keep New' or 'Clip/Blog This' features

Bloglines

My public Bloglines feeds are available at

http://www.bloglines.com/public/jdorman

Google Reader

Stay up to date

Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content.

Share with your friends

Use Google Reader's built-in public page to easily share interesting items with your friends and family.

Use it anywhere, for free

Google Reader is totally free and works in most modern browsers, without any software to install.

https://www.google.com/reader/view/

Sharing Feeds with Google Reader

Importing and Exporting

Added Functionality

Google Reader

Take a tour of Google Reader at http://snipurl.com/1w843

Create a personalized homepage with iGoogle http://www.google.com/ig

Integrates with Google Reader

Learn more about Google Resources for Educators at http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/Google

Netvibes

Netvibes is a personalized page – you can now modify everything: move modules, add new RSS/ATOM feeds, change the parameters for each module, etc.

Your modifications are saved in real-time and you'll find your page when you get back on Netvibes.com.

If you want to be able to access your page from any computer, you can sign in with your email and a password.

http://www.netvibes.com/

Netvibes

NetVibes can pull content from:

RSS or web feeds

Podcasts

Calendars

Widget and applications modules

http://www.netvibes.com/

Pageflakes http://www.pageflakes.com

Pageflakes

Pageflakes is your personalized start page on the Internet.

Your address book, local weather information, to-do-list, news, blogs and much more – all on one page that you can access from anywhere.

You can also use Pageflakes to keep up with your favorite blogs and news feeds.

"Flake" is our word for those little modules which you can see on the screen.

http://www.pageflakes.com

Pageflakes in Action

Customizing – Content

Click on the Flake button in the upper right

Customizing – Layout

Customizing – Themes

Pagecasting with Pageflakes

“ Pagecasting” means publishing your Pageflakes page for others to see.

You can share your Pagecast with the world or with a private group.

You can even let others edit and contribute to your Pagecast!

http://www.pageflakes.com

Pagecasting

Select Make Pagecast

Designate sharing permissions

Pagecasting

Broadcast the URL address and invite others to collaborate to maintain dynamic page content

Helpful hint:

You can shorten your Pagecast URL with the following applications: http://snipurl.com , http://tinyurl.com/ , http://teach42.com/go/

Public Pagecast http://snipurl.com/1w80a

Sharing Pagecasts

Users can:

Follow the Pagecast by clicking “Watch this Pagecast”

Copy the Pagecast into their account and modify the content for their purposes

E-mail the Pagecast to others

Interesting Read

Visit http://snipurl.com/1w80r to read a July 2007 interview with Dan Cohen, the CEO of Pageflakes

Our focus is on trying to do this for everybody and that’s evidence in the fact that we don’t even call them widgets, we don’t talk about RSS, we talk about flakes. Flakes, that go on your page. A page of flakes. They are really lightweight applications that go on a page.

Grazr

Grazr is a free and easy way to gather and organize information from all over the Web.

Use our drag and drop editor to collect feeds and links to Web pages, and then share them with others on this site, or place them on your own pages with our free widget.

http://www.grazr.com/

RSS Reading Lists with Grazr

Creating Widgets with Grazr

Grazr

Embedded Grazr feed reader

Grazr Widget

Reading feeds through embedded Grazr widgets

Using RSS in Education Pedagogy and Research

Why use RSS in education?

RSS has transformed the way that content is distributed, accessed, and processed

21 st century students are no longer faced with the challenge of “finding” enough information – rather, they are faced with an avalanche of information

RSS is one way for students to locate information more efficiently

Of course, they still need to be taught how to process, analyze, and evaluate

Why use RSS in education?

It is also a way to leverage the talent of millions of individuals to identify truly useful information in the tidal wave of data the internet has become.

Mary Harrsch, “RSS: The Next Killer App for Education”

http://technologysource.org/article/rss/

Using RSS is Research-Based

Dr. Henry Jenkins

Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT

“ Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21 st Century”

Participatory culture and its implications for learning in the 21 st century (RSS is all about participation, networking, and community)

21 st century skills and literacies (applied skills students need to be school, work, and life ready)

21 st Century Participatory Culture

Relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement

Strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others

Some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices

Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

21 st Century Participatory Culture

Members believe that their contributions matter

Members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created)

Implications

A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including:

opportunities for peer-to-peer learning,

a changed attitude toward intellectual property,

the diversification of cultural expression,

the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.

Implications

Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement.

The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking.

These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.

The New Literacies

Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes

Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

The New Literacies

Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

The New Literacies

Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

21 st Century Skills

National Educational Technology Standards for Students

Communication and Collaboration

Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:

interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.

http://snipurl.com/1w89f

21 st Century Skills

National Educational Technology Standards for Students

Research and Information Fluency

Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students:

plan strategies to guide inquiry.

locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.

evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.

process data and report results.

http://snipurl.com/1w89f

RSS for Teaching and Learning Practical Applications

Professional Learning Communities

Educators are professionals who, by nature, are always learning

Through RSS feed readers and personalized home pages educators can create their own learning network and learn from other educators

Join My Learning Network

Subscribe to my Cliotech Blog

http://cliotech.blogspot.com/

Join my Wiki

http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/

My Diigo Group – Engaging Digital Natives

http://groups.diigo.com/groups/edn

My Del.icio.us Bookmarks

http://del.icio.us/cliotech

My EdTech Blog Pagecast

http://snipurl.com/1w80a

My Google Reader Blogroll

http://snipr.com/1wnu9

As of Jan. 1, 2008, my learning network included individuals from over 80 countries

My Learning Network

Classroom Applications for RSS

Have students subscribe to each other’s blogs and/or the teacher’s blog

Have students and parents subscribe to your blog, podcast, or wiki feed to keep abreast of what is going on in class

RSS Feeds for News, Blog, and Website Searches

Create a feed for what’s in the daily news about a particular topic, you can make a syndicated feed of search results of Google News

Aggregate targeted news feeds with a shared (published) feed reader (Pageflakes, Grazr, etc.)

This basically creates a constantly updating targeted “current events” text for students

Targeted News Feeds

RSS Feeds for Bookmarks

Teachers can create a social bookmarking account and publish the list for their students (instant hotlists)

Teachers can create a class account and all students can add to the content

Students can create accounts to collaborate with group members and share resources more effectively

All the feeds can be aggregated with the same feed readers used for blogs, podcasts, news, and other media sites

RSS Feeds for Bookmarks

The following social bookmarking applications allow for publishing Internet bookmarks through RSS feeds:

http://www.diigo.com/

http://del.icio.us/

http://www.furl.net/

http://www.blinklist.com/

Social Bookmarking in Plain English http://snipurl.com/1w8wg

Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/

Furl http://www.furl.net/

BlinkList http://www.blinklist.com/

BlinkList http://www.blinklist.com/static/classroom.php

Digg

Find an article, video, or podcast online and submit it to Digg.com. Your submission will immediately appear in “Upcoming Stories,” where other members can find it and, if they like it, Digg it.