RSS | miller's spin

Sep 06

Feed me! RSS in plain English

What is RSS? How can it save you time?

Watch this movie now!

*Special thanks to Des Osborn for pointing out this movie after a recent Elluminate Session… e-Tools ‘n Tips

There a few more of these “in Plain English” videos by Lee LeFever at CommonCraft

There has been a lot of interest in RSS lately. What is RSS, how can it help you and save you time? If the movie above wasn’t enough, then check out some of the links below…

Looking at my blog statistics and reader clicks, the RSS information seems to be the most popular, so here is a list of posts and resources from the archives;
Most visited posts

Netvibes Vs Google Reader - Aug 14th
Alex’s demonstration of netvibes - August 13th
Netvibes ‘How To’ - June 14th
RSS in education - April 18th

First of all, thanks to Sue Waters for posting an introduction of everyone that’s participating in the 31 Day Blogging Challenge created by Darren Rowse. It’s a great way to find out about everyone involved.

Sue, I think you’ve really started something with this netvibes Vs GoogleReader thing with the comments on your post;

“Alex from Miller’s Spin (Australia) may well cause me to be banned from Google forever. Her great screencast of how she uses Netvibes to subscribe to blogs has convinced a lot of bloggers not only to try Netvibes but also to give Jing a go. Which I did - and here is my quick screecast of how I use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs!” Sue Waters

I liked the jing movie you created and have linked to above, it was very informative. I love that GoogleReader let’s you view the blog posts on that one page, that makes life easy! As RSS feed readers go, both netvibes and Google Reader actually do very similar things (I also use iGoogle), but I do find netvibes a little prettier (much like Mac vs Windows) and has more ‘theme’ customisation options. I also love that you can drag pods over the tabs to drop them into different pages.

It’s also good to see everyone getting into jing.

Also, thanks to Kate Quinn from Waxlyrical (Australia) (also loving Netvibes) for setting up a netvibes page to follow our 31 Day Blog challenges. I updated this yesterday - click the button to add this to your Netvibes page.

Facebook Meet Netvibes: Netvibes Introduces the Facebook Widget

Tame Your Online Spaces with Netvibes

RSS, Web Tools, Communication Tools 1 Comment »

Wow! Do you get the vibe???

I know I’ve mentioned netvibes before, but the new features really are amazing!

New to RSS?
For those of you who need a primer, have a look at this post about RSS. After that, you can have a look at the RSS Session in my wikispace.

The best thing about the new features?
Apart from the new themes, wallpapers and cool customisation choices, you can really extend the capability of the Tabs by sharing them. You can now set up a page of links/ feeds/ resource that is conten/ topic specific and share it with your students/ colleagues. A VERY HANDY way to share links & resources from one spot!

What?
If you’ve created an account and explored netvibes before now, you will know that you can sort and place all of the information/ RSS feeds you subscribe to on the Internet (that is, all those blogs, wiki’s, news and resource sites) into the one spot. Let’s investigate…

Cool New Feature 1. Share Your Tabs!
Imagine setting up a page of RSS feeds to a selection of resources for a special class… sounds good huh? Well not only can you set it up very easily, you can share that page with an entire class. Have a look at the images below for an example of what you can do.

Cool New Feature 2. Customisation Heaven! Have a look at the new galleries of wallpapers and themes that are available. One of the most beautiful blogs I read now has a netvibes theme (This is the blog - Veerle if you’re interested)!

Click below to view larger images

Cool Old Features:

Drag ‘n Drop pods - click and drag the pods around , AND drag them to anoter Tab!
Colour schemes
Add content from your favourite sites
Add content from their feed directory
Add a To-Do List pod
Add a local weather pod
Add a web-note pod (place notes & web links here)
Add your del.icio.us bookmarks
Add a Web Search pod
Add an Image Search pod
Add a Video Search pod

Get netvibed today!

Get netvibes!

netvibes blog/ help/ gallery

Share my Technology in Education netvibes tab -

How can I use RSS?

RSS, Web Tools 2 Comments »

RSS Feeds in Education?

So what is RSS and how can it be used in education?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication.

Either way, RSS is important technology that information specialists and educators would be smart to harness sooner rather than later.

As a teacher you may find a heap of Weblog and media sites on the Internet that are consistently publishing interesting and relevant information for you and your Keeping on top of these is nearly impossible.

RSS feeds allows you to do get all of this information in one place by using a type of software called an “aggregator” or feed collector. The aggregator regularly checks the feeds you subscribe to and collects anything new from those sites you are subscribed to.

Then, your aggregator (such as netvibes, bloglines, SharpReader) displays the individual stories, which provide a link to the full story if you want more info.

Here are some examples:

Moodle - when you force your students to subscribe to a class forum, an RRS Feed icon appears at the top of the forum. Students can use this link to receive updates directly into their RSS Aggregator of choice or directly to their browser.
It can work the other way too, if you have 20 - 30 students posting their work to a wiki, blog, flickr or other site, instead of checking all 30 sites, you can subscribe to their RSS feeds using an aggregator and view it all from the one place.
If you use Weblog software (like Moveable Type or Manila) you can import RSS feeds into pages you create for your or your students’ sites. While it takes a bit of code to make it work (there is plenty of help for doing this on the net), the benefits of bringing topic specific feeds into student (or teacher) work spaces is something worth exploring don’t you think?
For more examples of RSS Search Feeds, RSS Feeds for News Searches, RSS Feeds for Weblog Searches, RSS Feeds for Website Searches, RSS Feeds for News Group Searches, RSS Feeds for Other News Outlets, RSS Feeds for Bookmarks or Combining RSS Feeds - have a look at this RSS FAQ for Educators.

For more detail/ examples, have a look at this site.
This Guide will also be really helpful - RSS Guide by TeachingHacks.com

Check out netvibes…

What is netvibes?

Netvibes is an RSS Aggregator. It automtically reeds RSS web feeds. Compose your start page the way you like it…

With netvibes, all your digital life fits in one page. Blogs, news, online videos, podcast, pictures, e-mail: pick your favorite service to create your netvibes page.

Have a go! See it in Action

Go to netvibes
Copy an RSS Feed URL from any site (eg. TeachingHacks.com)
- (Firefox users) Right click and select Copy Link Location
- (IE users), click the icon and then copy the URL from the address bar at the top of the browser
Go back to your netvibes page and click on the Add Content link
Click Add Feed
Paste in the URL that you copied, into the Address section (above) and click Add.
The latest posts to this Educational Web Tools Blog will now appear, automatically on your netvibes homepage. click for larger image
From the new ‘pod’, you can click the item to get more info, or go to the site itself.
That’s it. Everytime you see the RSS feed logo on a webpage, you can follow the same steps. In fact, I have set mine up to give me the Forum posts as students & teachers reply to them.

Sometimes you’ll see the netvibes button on news sites, blogs and other information portals. By clicking this button, you are subscribing to the RSS feed for that site. You can subscribe to this blog by clicking this;