Thing 07 - RSS Feeds and Blog Readers

Thing 7 - RSS Feeds and Blog Readers

Purpose:  To learn how RSS feeds and blog readers can be used to organize information.   

Make Life “really simple” with RSS & a news reader

You’ve heard of RSS? You’ve seen those small funny tags on websites? You’ve heard

co-workers and acquaintances swear by it, but still have no idea what RSS is? Well don’t worry, according to a this survey you’re still in the majority, but this is changing rapidly. In the information world, RSS is not only revolutionalizing the way news, media and content creators share information, but it also is swiftly changing the way everyday users are consuming information.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web. Just think about the websites and news information sources you visit everyday. It takes time to visit those sites and scour the ad-filled and image-heavy pages for just the text you want to read, doesn’t it? Read more about RSS here or see this video at BlipTV. [video already on the wiki by Rob]

Now imagine if you could visit all those information sources and web pages in just one place and all at the same time … without being bombarded with advertising… without having to search for new information on the page you’d already seen or read before… and without having to consume a lot of time visiting each site individually. Would that be valuable to you? Well, it’s available now through a newsreader and RSS.  Here are a few tutorials to help you learn about the importance of RSS and RSS feed readers:

• Feed Me: An introduction to Internet feeds - a good tutorial from Palinet, a library cooperative
• What is RSS? Video by Common Craft. See other similar videos.
• How to Make your RSS Feeds Pop! Check your local newspaper and discover if they have an RSS feed you can subscribe to.
• Additional Bloglines news feed subcription information · Your co-workers or members of the Virtual Services Task Group - tap into their knowledge and experience with RSS feeds and readers.
• To read your rss feeds offline, read about Google Gears , which is a free download from Google - http://gears.google.com/.

Discovery Activities

1. Back in Thing 3, “Google suite”, you created your Google reader.  This is the tool that allows you to collect information from any website or blog with an RSS feed (that little orange symbol indicates the web page has an rss feed).  Other terms used for a blog or RSS reader include “news aggregator”, “blog reader”, RSS feed reader.  This is your time to go back to your Google reader and to take a look at the other popular blog reader which is called Bloglines.

2. If you’d like, you can create a Blogline’s account.  Here are the steps for creating a bloglines account  using the Bloglines Tutorial.   

To share your bloglines blog readers with others, this is how you would do this:

• Click on the Share tab within your Bloglines account:
• Scroll down the right screen pane and locate the public URL.  Why have a public account? To share blog links with others, of course. That's how we keep track of  23 Things participants.

For your information, there are other RSS feed readers which include RSSBandit, FeedReader or GreatNews. You can use a web-based RSS reader such as www.rojo.com.  Web browsers such as Firefox and Opera have built-in RSS readers, as do some mail programs, including Thunderbird. Once you've picked out your news reader, read the instructions for the reader to subscribe to the below feeds.

3. Make sure you have at least 10 feeds/blogs (you learned how to add blogs in Thing 3).  Remember, there are hundreds of types of blogs and feeds, including news outlets, personal blogs, and sports scores. 

Ideas of newsfeeds to add to your reader:

• San Jose Mercury RSS Feeds (scroll down to the bottom) - http://www.mercurynews.com/rss
• Fresno Bee RSS feeds - http://www.fresnobee.com/rss/
• Reader’s Club new review feeds
• Unshelved - Library cartoon feed
• Mabry Middle School, Georgia - example RSS feed
• Westwood School, Georgia - example RSS Calendar Feed

Blog Post: “Thing 7 – RSS Feeds” – Create a post in your blog about this exercise. Don’t know what to blog about? Think about these questions: What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life? How can students use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

 **Challenge/Bonus  – Add the following to the side of your blog: 

Clustr Map like this (showing where people have visited from) - http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/index.html

If you have a Flickr account, add your last three pictures on the side like this: http://robdarrow.wordpress.com.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web. Just think about the websites and news information sources you visit everyday. It takes time to visit those sites and scour the ad-filled and image-heavy pages for just the text you want to read, doesn’t it? Read more about RSS here watch this video: