Learning 2.0 Assignment 3: RSS

This week we’re focusing on RSS. This post will give you a brief overview of the technology and explain the activities for the week. This assignment is due on Monday, October 6.

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

1. Read the articles “It Really Is Really Simple: RSS for Educators” and “News á la Carte,” and watch the RSS in Plain English video.
2. Set up an aggregator account with Bloglines.
3. Subscribe to the feed for this Learning 2.0 @ SCSU blog. Go to http://learning2scsu.blogspot.com/. To subscribe to this blog, look for the section “subscribe to learning 2.0” located on the right side of the blog. Click on the RSS icon and select Bloglines from the list of aggregators/readers.
4. Add at least three other news feeds, blogs, or Web page updates to your account. There are several ways you can locate RSS feeds. You might use only one of these:
• When visiting your favorite Web sites, look for the orange RSS icon. Often a feed icon like this will be displayed somewhere in the navigation of the site.
• Use Bloglines’s search tool. This tools lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations, and the Web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.
• Do a blog search in Google. This search limits results only to blog postings.
• Look at the list of RSS feeds available for CNN.
• Do a search in Technorati. Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs.

Assignment 3 post prompts (answer these questions in your own blog):

1. What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
2. Do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life? If yes, how and if no, why not?
3. Which tool for finding feeds was easiest to use?

Questions?

• Post in the discussion forum in D2L.
• E-mail your professor: Melissa Prescott or Robin Ewing.