RSS: Connecting Ideas and Knowledge
posted in blogs, web 2.0, workshops |Preso by Will Richardson at MTI 2006 sponsored by MACE Kansas
blog: weblogged-ed.com
email: weblogged at gmail dot com
presentation resources: webloggedlinks.pbwiki.com
His free RSS guide (PDF)
Using his tablet and MS Office OneNote 2003 to teach this preso
Basic idea: is a technology that let’s you consume more content, instead of having to have you
2 pieces to RSS
- the feed (channel through which the info comes to you)
- the aggregator (news reader)
Graphic: thinking about lots of boxes coming into a larger box
A feed is an address, that is what you are looking for
- RSS
- reason it says “XML” is because that is the programming language RSS is built on / written in
Every blog has a built-in RSS feed, many mainstream media outlets are now putting out RSS feeds (Smithsonian and NASA are examples)
- example you can google for: NYT RSS
you can subscribe to any file with RSS, depending on what someone is publishing
So that is what a feed is, now let’s explore what an aggregator is
- Example: Bloglines.com
- this is all free, even though you have to “subscribe” to it
Book “Naked Conversations” is really good, author claimed he could track 1200 feeds
I now use the “flock” browser which has a built in aggregator, all kinds of cool stuff built into the browser instead of IE (free)
the “keep new” feature in bloglines is really cool, the clip/blog feature is not as great
- “keep new” allows it to stay in the displayed bloglines
Course Will teaches at Seaton Hall in NJ
- has all the students
My classes went paperless when all my kids had a blog
Weblogs in Education: are all the teachers, edublogers, about 70+ folks there
Even tho I’m a blogger, I’m a reader first
- this is a distintion that is important
- I am a blog snob: blogging really starts with reading
- blogging really starts with what you read, and how you synthesize it
- people writing about what they ate for lunch are journaling, really not blogging
MY THOUGHT: I THINK THIS IS A GOOD DISTINCTION: MANY PEOPLE IN MAINLINE MEDIA MISTAKE JOURNALING FOR BLOGGING
Will doesn’t have all his feeds public on his bloglines account (students are not, “good reads” are not, etc.)
news.google.com is itself an aggregator, b/c it is tracking around 4500 news sources
DOPA is being considered in Congress, I want to follow this, so I do Google News search for DOPA, search by date– now can get customized RSS feed
- do a country search like Somalia, then limit to specific sources
Also mentioned del.icio.us in the keynote
- allows me to add annotated information to each saved link
- we’ve used taxonomies for a long time like the Dewey Decimal system, but those were used in a world where there were not too many content creators
– now we are in an environment where people self-organize (this is the shift from a taxonomy to a folksonomy: using tags)
- Will’s del.icio.us quotable link list: http://del.icio.us/willrich/quoteable
- and you can subscribe to that del.icio.us
THIS IS A GREAT IDEA!
This is like “web goodness” now, we all share
- we are working for the betterment of each other
Go back to del.icio.us and look at the current cloud tag
Now on to flickr
Example: Alan Levine’s superglu page: example of all his content together online
Pageflakes is an interesting website and service
- can use this as a portal for yourself
- sort of like Netvibes
- if you want to create your own newspaper, this is sort of like how the Flock browser aggregates RSS content
Technorati.com
Wikipedia now supports RSS feeds, you can subscribe to the history as an RSS feed (new in the last few weeks!)
Technorati Tags: mti2006
On this day..
- links for 2008-07-27 - 2008
- DOPA might not kill all DSN education in schools - 2006
- Virtual Field Trips: Take Students on An Adventure to Learn - 2006
- Putting the "interactive" into interactive electronic whiteboards - 2006
- DOPA passes US House of Reps - 2006
- Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast Nation - 2006
- A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything - 2006


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