1. Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
Peta Hopkins
Michael Rees
What is RSS
How to recognise RSS
Create a Bloglines Account
Ideas for teaching & learning
Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

2. Really Simple Syndication in plain English
By Lee Lefever, April 2007 available Youtube ( ) and Blip.tv
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

3. Using RSS to keep up-to-date
What types of information are in feeds
Journal table of contents
News
Weather
Blogs, Podcasts
Shared bookmarks
Newsletters
Professional and Commercial websites
Cartoons, Photographs, and more
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

4. Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
11 July 2007
What is RSS
See some RSS then forget it
RSS example on USB key if needed.
Lawnewtitles.xml
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

5. Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
11 July 2007
What is RSS
Bundles of RSS feeds
Outline processor markup language (OPML) is used to share reading lists
See some opml and then forget it
Have class download the opml file to their desktop or H drive. They will import it into Bloglines later in the class.
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

6. Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
11 July 2007
Recognising a feed
Clues in your browser
What to look for on a website
Explain what to look for on websites and in browsers.
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

7. Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
11 July 2007
Try these links
- then click on “The L files”
Demonstrate the first one
Library website has no autodiscovery of feeds
L files – browser icon will go orange
Feedburner – button
Class can take a look at their others
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

8. Setting up a feed reader
Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
11 July 2007
Setting up a feed reader
Get a newsreader account
Subscribe to feeds
Import a bundle of feeds
Organise your feeds in folders
Search for feeds
Export your feeds
Go to
Register
Go to – to activate the Bloglines account
Orientation of Bloglines – what’s where Tabs -
Subscribe to
Import OPML file previously saved to desktop
Organise folders
Create a folder for Bond University
Move bond feeds into the folder
Users can create their own folders and move feeds around
Look at sorting order
Look at drag/drop
Search for feeds in Bloglines
Search for posts
Search for feeds
Search and subscribe to search results
Show where to export feeds (in case they want to move to a different feed reader)
Show Bloglines Notifier – option for downloads + the subscribe to Bloglines
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

9. Social Bookmarking with del.icio.us
Central web-based repository of bookmarks
Each bookmark is tagged with keywords
Bookmarks are shared by default, but can be private
Every tag or search has an RSS feed
Use subject code/semester for tag; students can access as links or feeds
See:
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

10. Practical RSS for Teaching and Learning
11 July 2007
Sample del.icio.us tag
Tag
Hyperlink
Other tags
Shows:
Hyperlink
RSS feed
Tag list and related tags
Popular links
RSS feed link
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

11. Teaching with student blogs
Part of continuous assessment worth 5-7%
Intended to form record of resource discovery and topic understanding through semester
Approximately twice-weekly blog entries
All blog entries shared with class
List of RSS feeds and/or OPML published on iLearn
See INFT13-338_072: Programming Web Applications
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

12. Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Links
What is RSS
See some OPML
Recognising feeds
- then click on “The L files”
Sign up for a feed reader
Or you might like to try Google Reader:
Subscribe to feeds
Practical Ideas for using RSS in teaching
INFT13-338_072: Programming Web Applications
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees

13. Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees
Putting RSS to use
RSS and Education Sharon Housely (no date) in RSS Specifications
“Academia has embraced RSS as a means to educate but, scrutinizing how educational institutions are using RSS feeds in their daily routines show RSS is utilized can vary across different industries.” (sic)
11 July 2007
Practical RSS for T&L - Peta Hopkins and Michael Rees