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

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

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
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.
Subscribe to RSS feeds of particular topics, popular/upcoming sections, individual users, and the search terms of your choice
Digg. Participate in the collaborative editorial process by Digging the stuff that you like best.
Build a friend list; then your friends can track what you’re Digging. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed of your submissions and/or your Diggs.
http://www.digg.com/

Diigo http://www.diigo.com/

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

RSS Feeds for Media
Media hosting sites (e.g. YouTube, Flickr, etc.) organize individual media content (images, video, audio) with tags
Tags are one-word descriptors that users can assign to pretty much all online content help organize, aggregate, and remember
RSS feeds can be created to track new submissions of media by tags

Syndicating Your Content
Most blogs, podcasts, wikis, and other media hosts embed their own RSS feed
Users can also use a third-party feed distributor to widen their syndication, create easier-to-use syndication buttons, and track usage statistics

Syndicating Your Content
Feedburner is a free syndication tool
http://www.feedburner.com
FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds.
Tools help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web

For More Information and Research
RSS in Education Resources
http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/RSS

http://jdorman.wikispaces.com	419
http://parcepsocialmedia.wikispaces.com	189
http://etoolbox.wikispaces.com	84
http://savvyscholar.wikispaces.com	38
http://21stcenturyskillspd.pbwiki.com	19
http://cliotech.blogspot.com	15
http://jujo00obo2o234ungd3t8qjfcjrs3o6k-a-sites-opensocial.googleusercontent.com	6
http://blendedschools.blackboard.com	5
http://pamelaarraras.com.ar	5
http://amschoolcurriculum.blogspot.com	5
https://etoolbox.wikispaces.com	4
http://www.slideshare.net	2
https://jujo00obo2o234ungd3t8qjfcjrs3o6k-a-sites-opensocial.googleusercontent.com	2
http://moodle1.wilkes.edu	2
https://jdorman.wikispaces.com	1
http://kirstenhaugen.org	1
http://digitalclassrooms.wikispaces.com	1
http://grazr.com	1
http://www.netvibes.com	1
http://cliotech.blogspot.ca	1

RSS For Educators

by Jennifer Dorman on Dec 31, 2007

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RSS For Educators — Presentation Transcript