Introduction to RSS feeds and aggregators, their use and usefulness. 1) Feedback and discussion from prep (5–10 mins): your Google homepage; your experience of creating a group of tabs as your homepage. As was suggested last lesson, there are other ways of personalising your web experience and we're going to see many more developments to this end as more and more people find web+browser to be their preferred way of using mobiles, laptops — and even desktops. (Incidentally, for the first time notebooks are now out-selling desktops.) Here's another way of personalising your web experience — wherever you are: webmail. Gmail, for example, offers Gmail Labs. Go to your Gmail page and then click on the green flask (see below): This takes you to a page that's headed up like this: You can experiment with Labs and use it as yet another way of customising your web experience. (If you want to check out what other developments have happened recently with Gmail, have a look at What we have been working on.) 2) In groups, discuss what you think RSS is, who uses it and how. Then watch RSS in Plain English (video; approx 4 mins) and discuss. 3) Using your Google account, open Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/) and explore the interface. The support pages at http://www.google.com/support/reader/?hl=en (under 'Reading') will help. Practise subscribing to and organising some feeds. Here are some suggestions, but you'll also be invited to share ideas for feeds/good pages:
These are examples: these feeds/pages will provide you with a lot of material relevant to your development and work over your time at St Paul's. In addition, you will, of course, find or be pointed to many a site/feed relating to your academic work: eg, Geography might recommend the Google Earth Blog, Classics recommends blogs (see here) ... Practise spotting and subscribing to a blog's feed by using Stephen Fry's blog: http://stephenfry.com/blog/. Like some other web-based RSS readers, Google Reader doesn't currently support authentication for private feeds that require a username and password to view. Password-protected RSS feeds may feature realtively little in your lives right now, but you might want to follow feeds from, for example, our own (password-protected) intranet (see, for example, the homepage for an RSS feed; or the Physics Department homepage which has a Physics News RSS feed). Creators of SPS intranet RSS feeds can set them to work for guests who aren't logged in: here's the News RSS feed in guest form — it will work in Reader (copy the address and and it to Reader). This is the explanation: Firefly news feeds can be accessed via one of two URLs — either http://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/rss/user/newssource/2 or http://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/rss/guest/newssource/2 (using the News RSS feed as an example). Which one a user is given by the orange RSS icons depends on whether (s)he is logged in or not at the time. The difference between them is that the first one will prompt you for authentication (not Google Reader friendly), but will then show you all the stories that you have permission to see, whereas the second is not password-protected but will only show you stories that are accessible to guests. As word spreads about RSS feeds in Firefly, authors of news feeds will begin to exploit the guest form of the RSS feed. If your teacher is setting prep on the intranet, you might encourage him/her to do so via a guest-enabled RSS feed: subscribe to this feed in Reader and new prep will then appear automatically. Bonus extra 1: Did you know you can set up a Google Alert? This service has existed for some time, but over half-term it became possible to have the alert as an RSS feed. Now, news about your football team, someone in the news, an issue (global warming), etc, can come to you, very fast, in your Reader. Once you've set up an alert, go to Manage your Alerts and click on Edit. One of the drop-down menus allows you to choose between email and RSS: Bonus extra 2: Did you know you can even have favourite feeds turned into a personal magazine, for free: Tabbloid. Prep: populate your Reader and read it daily. (What are you interested in? What are you studying? What sites — websites, blogs — can you find for each of your interests and for each major area of study? Use Google: search, find, choose, subscribe.) Arrive next lesson prepared a) to show your Reader (explaining what you've subscribed to and how you've organised your subs) and b) to discuss your experience of using an RSS aggregator daily. Either now, or next lesson, you can add your own suggestions for good RSS feeds. They'll be posted here . |
|
Home >
Lesson 9: RSS & Aggregators
Subpages (1):
Good RSS feeds
|
