Web-based content is becoming a mainstream fixture in many curricula’s arsenals of learning resources that faculty members provide their students. Because that content can include articles from scholarly journals, emerging stories in the news/blogosphere, or multimedia content such as audio/video podcasts or presentations, navigating through these data can easily overwhelm even a seasoned instructor or researcher. Controlling the flow and delivery of this information with an “RSS reader” can make this daunting task simple and manageable.
RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is a protocol that drives the delivery of subscribed content to you, or your students’, desktops. Instead of taking the time to fetch new journal articles, blog entries, news stories or podcasts from the websites they reside on, you can use RSS to subscribe to content streams you’d like fed to you or your students automatically.
Google Reader, Netvibes and Firefox’s own “Live Bookmarks” are but a few of the hundreds of free tools available for subscribing to RSS-delivered content. Some sophisticated RSS readers allow you to rank or filter subscribed content (e.g., subscribing to articles from a music-history journal, but only displaying content that features Mozart). Web-based RSS readers such as Google Reader are portable. Your personalized content is available to you by logging into an account, from any web browser on any computer, anywhere.
Faculty members can share RSS-based content such as journal articles, breaking news and audio podcasts via their course management system. Moodle offers an “RSS Feed” block, so a professor can provide automatically-updated topical content to her students.
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| Google offers an easy to use web-based RSS reader |
If you are interested in using RSS for your research or instructional goals, I invite you to contact any of our DePauw FITS staff. Listed below are some online resources to help you get started.
RSS in Plain English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
Tour of Google Reader
http://www.google.com/help/reader/help.html
Finding and Subscribing to RSS feeds
