You’ve heard of RSS. You’ve seen those small funny tags on websites. You’ve heard colleagues and acquaintances swear by it, but still have no idea what RSS is? That's what the next few exercises are all about. In the information world, RSS is not only revolutionizing the way news, media and content creators share information, but it also is swiftly changing the way everyday users are consuming information.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering frequently updated and dynamic Web content delivered directly to the user. Just think about the websites and news information sources you visit everyday. It takes time to visit those sites and scour the images and ads for the text you want to read. RSS is also great for tables of contents for journals and magazines. Rather than checking a journal site regularly for the latest issue, you could have the TOC appear in your news reader as soon as it's published.
Now imagine if you could visit all those information sources and web pages in just one place and all at the same time … without the ads… without weeding out new information from the stuff you've seen before … and without having to consume a lot of time visiting each site individually. That's what a news reader does for you. This week’s discovery exercises focus on learning about RSS news feeds and setting up a Bloglines account (a free online newsreader) to bring your feeds together.
Lee LeFevre posted a great video explaining RSS and Readers available here and on the Common Craft website. You'll need speakers or headphones to watch this - if these aren't available, take a look instead at a similarly-themed text-based tutorial from Palinet (Palinet is an east coast library cooperative).
Whether you watch the video or check out the Palinet tutorial, you'll see several references to reader software. This software is the key to keeping track of your preferred RSS feeds. For the purposes of participating in UCSC Learning 2.0, we'd like you to use Bloglines. Why? It's easy to use, it's popular, it's feature-rich and it's free... If you prefer to use Google Reader, MyYahoo, or something else, go ahead and tell us about it on your blog.
Now on to today's Discovery Exercise in which you'll set up a Bloglines account and add a bunch of RSS feeds.
1. Go to Bloglines (link will open in a new window) and set up your personal account.
2. Subscribe to the RSS feed for the Learning 2.0 Weekly Tips blog.
How?
First, go to your Bloglines account and click on the 'Add' link in the left side of the screen.
Copy the blog's URL (http://ucsclearningtips.blogspot.com/) into the "Blog or Feed URL" box and click subscribe. Click the box next to the first choice on the next screen and click continue. You'll see it show up on the left side of the screen.
For more visual instructions, take a look at the YouTube video created by Learning 2.0 guru Helene Blowers for her library's Learning 2.0 program.
3. Subscribe to at least 2 of the RSS feeds from your colleagues' Learning 2.0 blogs. These blogs are linked from our participants page. Again, all you'll have to do here is type the blog URL (for example, this blog is http://ucsclearning2.blogspot.com) into the subscribe field in Bloglines.
4. Choose 1 or 2 feeds from the following sites and subscribe to them:
New York Times
McHenry Addition and Renovation Updates
UCSC Currents Online
5. Create a post in your blog about this exercise.
Advanced optional: If you're up to the challenge, you can provide the URL address to your public bloglines account (find where to find this below)
Don’t know what to blog about? Think about these questions:
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? Do you think you'll use them after this exercise?
How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
How can libraries use RSS?
How to find your public Bloglines URL:
1. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the feeds tab on the left, and look for Share.
2. Scroll down the right screen pane and locate the public URL.
You may need to edit your account settings first. Go to Account -> Blog settings, and first choose a username and then click the button next to "Publish my blogroll".
For more explicit instructions, see this week's tip from the Learning 2 team.
Why have a public account? To share blog rolls with others, of course.
Next up, thing #5b: Finding Feeds...
