Week 3
Personalization and RSS
"It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder,
but it has to be judiciously arranged."
Vita Sackville West
Recommended Readings
If 2004 was the year of the blog, then 2005 may well be the year of RSS. To find out more about this revolutionary technology and what it can do for you and your students, please explore the links listed below:
Pre-reading for Will Richardson's chat
RSS- Quick Start for Educators (pdf file)Blogging and RSS — The "What's It?" and "How To" of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators
Pre-reading for Mary Harrsch's chat
RSS: The Next Killer App for Education
- What is RSS?
- The ABCs of RSS
- Pssss...Have You Heard About RSS?
- All About RSS
- Robin
Good interviews Stephen Downes (mp3
file)
Looking for more places to submit your RSS feed? Visit the following URL to learn about more services and sites:
Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites
Individual Tasks
Step 1: Using an AggregatorIn order to immediately put RSS to work for you, it is best to use an aggregator to begin harvesting RSS feeds of your choice. One of the best web-based aggregators to use is Bloglines, which is free of charge and easy to use. With Bloglines, you can subscribe, create, search for, and share RSS feeds from a variety of resources.
Task Set #1
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Sign up for a Bloglines account. Visit the Bloglines FAQ page for answers to basic questions.
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Add the Bloglines Subscribe Button to your web browser. This will make it very easy to subscribe to a blog.
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Subscribe to the blogs of the participants in this course by importing the OPML file in the file section of YG to your hard disk. In Bloglines, click on Edit (top left tab) and look for Extra (left bottom) to import subscriptions.Upload the OPML file from your hard disk to your Bloglines account.
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Organize the items into folders however you wish.
- Comment on one of the posts in your aggregator originating from another participant in the course.
Step 2: Searching for FeedsNow that we've set up our Bloglines account, let's find some feeds of interest. Use the search features of Bloglines to find RSS feeds of potential interest.
Task Set #2
- Subscribe to a keyword search on Bloglines.
- Can you see the potential of using this tool to track "conversation" around a specific topic? Blog your impressions and comments
Step 3: Furling Around (optional)
Before moving on, let's take a look at yet another useful tool in the collection of free, web-based services: Furl, a social bookmarking application.Task Set #3
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Explore the following links to get a better idea of what Furl is.
- Open an account on Furl and add a link to your blog template.
Collective Tasks
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Group 1 (Collective Blog)
Blog Will Richardson's chat live on your personal blog for people who were not present, compare your notes to the others and together draft a final report on the wiki and post the final version on the collective blog. -
Group 2 (Collective Blog)
Based on your current practice in teaching, in what way might you go about:
- using RSS and aggregation to enhance ESL/EFL learning. Can you see the potential this might have for community formation?
- using Furl with your students. How would you do so?
Use your personal blogs to jot down your ideas, use the aggregator to check what others have written about it and post a summary of these in the collective blog. -
Group 3 (Wiki)
Transcribe all the useful links of this session and add any additional finds from personal blogs through RSS (step 3) with a description and a comment /review
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Group 4 (Collective Blog)
Read what participants in your group have posted on RSS/FURL (Task Set #2 and #3) and summarize it for other people to read and comment upon.
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Group 5 (Wiki)
Explore some of the other tracking services available on the internet: Feedster, Technorati, Blogdigger, Pubsub, Blogdex, Daypop. Compare and contrast these tools in their main features on the wiki.
