Week+4

=Week 4 - RSS and News Readers (2 activities) = = January 24 - 28 = = Activity 7 - What Is RSS/Setting Up A Newsreader and RSS In Plain English=

media type="youtube" key="0klgLsSxGsU" height="405" width="500" 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? 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 every day. 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?

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. This week’s discovery exercises focus on learning about RSS news feeds and what free tools you can use to do this.

=**Discovery Resources****:**= Netvibes is a very popular and very easy to use RSS newsreader. Here are some resources to get the most out of Netvibes: · [|How to use Netvibes for your blogs, websites, news, sports and RSS feeds] video · [|Netvibes intro] video · [|Edit and Share Widgets] video

=**Discovery Exercise:**= 1. Follow these discovery exercises to set up your own, personalized RSS feed reader. 2. Create a free "RSS aggregator" account from [|NetVibes] and subscribe to at least 5 newsfeeds to your reader. 3. 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 your classroom use RSS or take advantage of this new technology? Optional: If you're up to the challenge, you can share a particular blog with someone else from your Netvibes page.

= Activity 8 - Adding Content =

Now that you have an RSS Reader, you can begin adding other feeds that interest you. There are several ways you can locate RSS feeds (as seen in the first video):
 * When visiting your favorite websites -- look for RSS feed icons that indicate the website provides it. Often a feed icon will be displayed somewhere in the navigation of the site.
 * Use the recommendations in Netvibes. This is a great way to find new content.
 * Check out a [|list] of educator, classroom, administrator and specialist blogs that you may want to follow.
 * Ask a friend or colleague who/what they follow online.

=**Discovery Exercise** : =
 * 1) Create a blog post about your experience. Don't know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about. Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use? Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing? What kind of unuseful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find? What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?