Activity 6: 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 Tuesday, October 26.

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 Google Reader.
3. View the Google Reader in Plain English video and add at least three (3) news feeds, blogs, or Web page updates to your account. The video demonstrates several ways to locate and add RSS feeds. You might also use 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.
• 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.
4. Subscribe to the feed for this Learning 2.0 @ SCSU blog. Go to http://learning2scsu2010.blogspot.com/. To subscribe to this blog, look for the section “Subscribe To... Posts” located on the right side of the blog. Click on the pull down menu and select "Add to Google" from the list of aggregators/readers. Now, each time we post a new assignment, the link will be listed in your Google Reader account.
   

Post in your blog:

1. Label this post, Activity 6: RSS
2. What is convenient about RSS and newsreaders? Include some examples from the readings and/or videos.
   
3. 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?
4. Which tool for finding feeds was easiest to use?