Newsfeeds, RSS
What are they?
Newsfeeds, also known as RSS, are a relatively new mechanism for delivering information. Essentially, a newsfeed is a way of delivering short pieces of information using Web technology. Each newsfeed delivers items on a related subject; for example:
- The latest news (of national/regional interest, or about your organisation)
- Announcements about a programme of weekly seminars in a history deparment
- Announcements about research studentships
- Alerts about new postings on particular blogs
- Alerts to new content on individual Websites
A good way to start finding about newsfeeds and what they can do for you is the BBC News feeds page. The Educause Learning Initiative’s (ELI’s) 7 Things You Should Know About... series also contains a useful guide under the title RSS (PDF), also Common Craft has created a light-hearted animated introduction to RSS(audio required).
How can I use them with my students?
As a teacher, you can make use of newsfeeds in three ways:
- Use them as a research tool to keep up to date with developments in your field.
- Send announcements to your students; e.g. titles and deadlines for assignments, room changes. However, if you make such announcements infrequently or have a small number of student, email may be more appropriate.
- If your students are keeping blogs as part of their course, receive notification whenever each person makes a new posting.
Students can also use newsfeeds as a research tool, in order to gather the latest information (news and/or research data) on the topic which they are studying.
For more ideas, see Will Richardson’s paper RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators (Word document).
Examples
- Case study from Ravensbourne, RSS feeds and podcasts for Fashion learning content.
Where can I get one?
Reading newsfeeds:
Setting up a newsfeed reader is normally a two-stage process:
- Obtain a newsfeed reader; for example:
- Install a feedreader program such as Awasu, NewsGator and NewzCrawler.
- Use an email client (e.g. Opera Mail and Thunderbird) that allows you to have the items of a newsfeed delivered like ordinary email messages.
- Use a Website where you can subscribe to a newsfeeds, e.g., Google Reader, Bloglines and Yahoo!.
- Use your VLE, if it supports the reading of newsfeeds.
- Tell the newsfeed reader which newsfeeds you want to read (by giving it the URL of each newsfeed).
The newsfeed reader will then obtain the items of the newsfeeds as they are published and deliver them to you.
Publishing your own newsfeeds:
This is a rather more technical process, but your workplace may have its own service for staff and students to create their own newsfeeds. Otherwise, there are some Web-based services, such as rapidfeeds, that can take care of the technicalities for you.
For more information about tools for both aspects of newsfeed use, see the list of RSS feed tools from the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies.
