The World A.T. Ways

Posted By Barbara Lindsey on October 17, 2008

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As we mentioned in our inaugural post, Kevin and I envision Around the World in A.T. Ways as the locomotion that takes you comfortably and efficiently to various socially mediated web sites (often referred to as Web 2.0 sites) that we think are especially suited for the teaching and learning of languages and the development of intercultural competencies. Of course, along the way we also share how we and others have used these tools to give you a sense of their possibilities. We want to help you make the best use of your time and resources when on the web.

With that in mind, I’d like to talk today about the fuel that feeds the Web 2.0 engine, a powerful little workhorse called RSS and how taking advantage of RSS can make your time in the Web 2.0 world more efficient, more up-to-date and more organized.

You may have noticed, underneath the “Our Feeds” header on the left hand side of our blog, three icons, one that directs you to iTunes (as of the publication of this post we are not yet listed in iTunes, but this should change within the next few weeks) and the other two to our blog and podcast, both preceded by the word RSS. So what is RSS? Depending on who you talk to, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (the one I’ve seen most often), Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary or even Real-time Simple Syndication. But what it means isn’t really all that important for our purposes. After all, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Rather, it’s significance lies in what it does for us. RSS is a way for online publishers to deliver or “feed” their online content to interested parties or “subscribers” whenever new content is created and uploaded.

Just how does this work? Let’s say you regularly check Le Monde, not only to keep up-to-date on current events, but to search for material you can bring into your classroom. So how do you know what’s new from the last time you visited? Well, the only way you could before RSS became available was to go to Le Monde and search through the site yourself. As you can see with just this one site alone, you could spend quite a bit of time navigating the various links just to see what has changed. Think if you wanted to keep updated on five or ten or even twenty sites! That’s just not enough return on your investment of time and energy.

Now take a look at the URL or web address of Le Monde. See that little blue square all the way to the right of the address? The one with the radio waves radiating out diagonally from the bottom left corner up to the upper right corner? That is an RSS icon and it can come in all different colors, but most often it will be blue or orange. If you’re on a Mac and using Safari, you’ll see the word RSS in blue instead. If you click on the Le Monde RSS icon, you’ll get a drop down menu that will allow you to subscribe to sixteen different sections of this online newspaper. You can subscribe to them all or only to the ones that interest you. And once you subscribe to your “feed” you never have to go back to Le Monde again if you don’t want to, because now your feed is working for you. Anytime new content shows up on any one of the sections you’ve subscribed to, Le Monde‘s RSS service pushes out that content to you. Online newspapers, blogs, wikis, podcasts, music, pictures and videos—wherever you see that RSS icon, or a link to an RSS feed or even a subscribe button, you can let this service deliver the content you want right to your doorstep. All you need is some central repository to store your finds until you’re ready to look at them. These are commonly called “feed readers” or “feed aggregators”. In the case of podcasts, they are known as “podcatchers”, with iTunes being the most widely known one. There are many free aggregators available for you to use and in a future blog post we’ll talk about some “high performance” models but for now, let’s choose Google Reader. Below is a very short (just over a minute) and helpful video from our friends at the Common Craft Show about how to use Google Reader.

Once you’ve set up your Google Reader account you can click on “add subscription” as Lee Lefever showed us and type in Le Monde and Sports or Le Monde and Culture, for example, to bring up the link to those respective feeds, to which you can then conveniently subscribe. Or you could alternately go to Le Monde, click on the desired feed and copy and paste the resulting URL into your “add subscription” box. And then you’re done. It’s that easy. And the benefits are worth the small upfront investment in time. Now all the latest information from all your favorite web sites is housed on one site. It’s ready when you’re ready. Conducting some online research with a colleague? Want your students to collaborate on a research project that uses online materials? With Google Reader you can annotate sites if you wish and share those notes and web finds with colleagues and students. And best of all, unlike email, you can’t get spammed by subscribing to RSS feeds. Try harnessing the power of RSS by subscribing to our blog and podcasts!

Do you have a favorite “feed reader” that is simple and easy to use? Have you tried using one for a classroom project? Or do you have an idea that you want to share and get feedback on? We’d love to hear from you!

If you’d like some more information on RSS you can take a look at the following sites:

What is RSS: A tutorial introduction to feeds and aggregators

Feed 101— FeedBurner Help Center

And another really helpful overview of RSS by Lee and Sachi Lefever of the Common Craft Show

Photo credit: rss icon by Chesi

Categories: Productivity
Tags: Barbara, common craft show, feeds, google reader, readers, rss