Another step with RSS - "Readers"

Hopefully you are not ready to kill me yet - but today I'm going to talk a little more about RSS. In yesterday's post I told you about subscribing to RSS feeds in Firefox and putting them in a live bookmarks folder on your toolbar would save you a lot of time. Hopefully you are already beginning to explore some of these possibilities or have plans to do so soon.

So if I've already told you about how to subscribe to RSS feeds, why would you need an RSS reader? Well, a reader is handy for a couple of reasons - some people like having all their feeds from all of their publications together in one handy place. For Safari users, this is probably your easiest option for RSS feeds. I think the best reason is because readers are web-based. Part of the same reasons that Delicious and Diigo are great bookmarking sites are the exact same reasons RSS readers are...no matter what computer (or iPod, or iTouch, or Blackberry or any kind of smartphone device) you are on, you can always have access to your RSS feeds.

A reader is just an aggregator that "collects" the headlines and news feeds you subscribe to all in one place. Different readers have different benefits, so you'll have to decide which one has features (or look) you like best. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm only going to discuss web-based RSS readers - because the point is "portability".

I use GoogleReader, and I'll shamelessly plug Google here - it is a simple reader and if you already have a gmail account you already have access to it. However, there are other very good (web-based) readers, such as My Yahoo, and Bloglines.

Once you have set up your reader account - usually a quick and simple affair - you subscribe exactly the same way I told you in yesterday's post. If you are in Firefox, you can hit the button in the browser bar, and if you are in Safari, look for their RSS "chicklet" near the top or side of the page where "subscribe" information is. In Firefox, when you hit the little RSS button you get a new screen that looks like this;
And in Safari, when you hit the RSS button you want to get to one that looks something like this;

In Firefox, click that button that says "subscribe to this feed using" and you'll get a menu pop up that looks like the picture below. So if you are using the Bloglines reader, you would click that, the My Yahoo reader - click that, or the Google reader, click that - pretty simple. Next you'll be taken to a page where you just confirm you are adding the feed to that selected reader. Then it's done - very easy.
Same with the Safari pop-up menu - choose your reader and it's all done!

If you were going to put this blog, EdTechSec, into a reader - for Firefox users, just click on the blue RSS chicklet in the browser bar and go from there. Or for Firefox AND Safari users, just click the "Posts" chicklet on the top right hand column of this blog and you can do the same thing. Now EdTechSec will be in your reader.

Now, you can stay on top of your reading anytime any where, any computer - you can login to your reader, and there are all your feeds, all cozy together in one place!

Classroom Connection - If you use any online publications regularly in your classroom or would like to - such as news magazines, or any kind of regularly published kids magazines - have your students set up an RSS reader and have them subscribe to the feeds you want them to have. This makes it easy to assign regular readings from the publications or just have them handy for the students to look up. My French students each have Google readers and have 6 subscriptions to French news and entertainment publications that I want them to have for class. They also use the readers to subscribe to publications of their personal choosing - I don't care, as long as they have the publications I have required feeding in! Huge timesaver in terms of classroom management and materials management for you and your classes!

How many blogs and other publications do you read? Do you RSS?

How many blogs, online newspapers or magazines, or other online publications do you follow? How many would you LIKE to follow, if it didn't take much time and was easy to do?

I read (scan is more like it) around 30 educational and edtech blogs, about 5 educational news publications, and 5 regular online news publications. I don't read the whole things, and I don't always check them every day. They are all so good I hate to think I might miss anything in them, so I subscribe to their RSS feeds to make sure I can scan quickly to see if there is anything pressing I really need to read.

IF, at this point, you are saying "What is an RSS feed?" welcome to this discussion which will show you how easy this is. If you are saying, "I have RSS feeds", then please check back in tomorrow and maybe I'll have something new for you!

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Knowing what it stands for doesn't help our understanding, so just forget that and remember "RSS". If you are reading any online publication that you enjoy, and in your browser bar you see this symbol;

then you can easily subscribe to that publication. Subscribing to their RSS feed simply means you can check their headlines whenever you want. They won't email you (you don't even give an email, a name, or sign in or up or anything), you don't pay, you won't get junk mail, and it takes about 5 seconds to subscribe.

I'll explain how I do this, because for me this is the easiest way to keep my publications in sight so that I remember to check my feeds.

First - I set up a folder right in my bookmarks toolbar (in Firefox) - just go to "bookmarks" and create a new folder right in the bookmarks toolbar menu - you can put it anywhere, but for me, keeping it in my bookmarks toolbar means it's right in front of my face. For starters, just name it "RSS Feeds". Later you may want to make several folders, depending on your reading habits - one for regular news, one for educational news, one for blogs, etc. The possibilities are probably endless.

Anyhow, lets start out with something simple - Education Week is a good publication that covers a lot of topics that are current in education. When you go to their site, you will notice that their browser window looks like this;

That little blue box at the end is their RSS feed button. This is the very most simple way to subscribe to a feed. Simply click that button. You will immediately get a little pop-up menu with a couple of items - usually they say "Subscribe to RSS", and "Add RSS as a live bookmark in Delicious". We learned a little about Delicious yesterday, but today we are just talking about very simple RSS - so as long as you are going to be storing it in that folder you made in your bookmarks toolbar, just click the option that says "Subscribe to RSS" (sometimes it will say "Subscribe to RSS 2.0"- also a good choice).

So, as soon as you choose the "Subscribe to RSS" option, a new page will immediately load, and at the top you will see this;

The folder you have created in your bookmarks toolbar is a "live bookmark", so you don't need to change this option. Just click the "Subscribe now" button. As soon as you do, this little window will pop up;

The blue highlighted portion is the title of the publication - it is highlighted because if you want to change it to a shortened form that is easier for you, this is where you can - you can also change it later in your bookmarks folder when you organize them. Underneath the name, is the part where you select your folder where you are putting this feed - in this case it will be the new folder you created in your bookmarks toolbar - so click that folder, then click the blue "add" button.

That's it! Now, when you click on that folder you created in your bookmarks tool bar called "RSS Feeds" or whatever you named it, you will see Education Week - when you roll your cursor over it, a list of the latest headline "feeds" will pop up with the latest at the top. You can now quickly peruse the headlines and click on the one that interests you - it will immediately take you to that specific article or post. How much easier could this be? You can put a lot of RSS subscriptions in your folder - I have 30 in my "EdBlogs RSS" folder alone and have room for more!

With my RSS feeds organized this way, I can very quickly scroll through all of the headlines of my favorite publications and pick and choose what I want to read (usually based on how much time I have available).

If you are new to this, here are some good "starter" feeds for your educational reading pleasure!
Edutopia, Alaska Education, and of course a very good blog I know of called EdTechSec (by now you may have noticed that little blue RSS button in the browser bar!).