Week 4, #8 – RSS and Newsreaders




RSS and Newsreaders (Week 4, #8)

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web.

Take a look at 7 things you should know about RSS before getting started.

Here it is, in plain english:
If the video below does not play, try this link!

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 setting up a Bloglines account (a free online newsreader) for yourself to bring your feeds together.

Discovery Exercise #8:
 
 Beginner
 
1. Create a free online Bloglines account for yourself and subscribe to at least 10 newsfeeds to your reader. See Using Bloglines Tutorial steps 1-3 for instructions.
2. 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 work or personal life?
How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

Advanced

Provide the URL address to your public bloglines account (find where to find this below) in your blog post this week.

How to find your public Bloglines URL:

  1. Click on the Share tab within your Bloglines account:
  2. Scroll down the right screen pane and locate the public URL (see screenshot)
  3. Be sure to add this as part of your post to demonstrate your completion of this activity.

PS: Once you tackle this discovery exercise, you’ve tackled the most difficult one of the whole 23. :)

This entry was posted on July 11, 2008 at 11:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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One Response to “Week 4, #8 – RSS and Newsreaders”

  1.   RSS and Newsreaders | Tech Tips & Timely Tidbits Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    [...] SCASL Thing #8: RSS and Newsreaders – the task is to find our rss reader shared link and provide it to our public.  So here is my Google Reader shared link.  However, I must tell you that I’ve not used it up until today.  I went and put a couple of the posts that I starred in there just so something would be in there.  I’ll have to remember to “share” what I star from now on! [...]

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s actual post text did not contain your blog url (http://scasl23things.edublogs.org/2008/07/11/week-4-rss-and-newsreaders-89-things) and so is spam.

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