RSS, Social Bookmarking and Wikis

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RSS,Social Bookmarkingand Wikis
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Imagine

• Each day a newspaper arrives on your front
  doorstep
• The newspaper is designed especially for you
• Each article is selected based on your
  preferences
• Perhaps your newspaper includes.
• Headline news from the New York Times, the BBC
  and The Australian
• Financial news from the Wall Street Journal and
  Harvard Business Review
• Sports news from Sports Illustrated and ESPN
• Entertainment news from Entertainment Weekly

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Introducing RSS

• How do you get a subscription to your very own
  personal newspaper?
• The answer is through RSS or Real Simple
  Syndication
• RSS allows you to subscribe to feed from specific
  content and have it delivered to one central
  place.

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RSS in School
RSS can be a powerful learning tool in and out of
school. Here are just a few resources to which
students and teachers can subscribe. Discovery
NY Times Book Review The Animal
Planet Google History Channel Flickr The
White House CNN.com Dictionary.com The
Weather Channel And many more
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What Subscribing to RSS Feed Means.

• Learning anytime, anywhere
• 24/7 research opportunities
• Individualized, customized instruction
• Research skills that will give your students the
  edge

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Do All Sites Have RSS?
Look for any of the following
All of these icons are used to show that a site
contains an RSS feed, but this symbol is becoming
the standard.
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Youve Set Up Your Bloglines Aggregator, Now
What?
Find a site that has a feed you want. Copy the
URL of the site. Paste the URL into your
Bloglines account. Check Bloglines regularly for
new content. Manage your feeds into folders.
(See handout for more details)
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Assignment
Take a moment to subscribe to one more feed. Try
Alans blog.
http//www.nlcommunities.com/communities/alannovem
ber
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What is Social Bookmarking?

• Publishing your bookmarks online for everyone to
  see students, colleagues, family members.
• Finding related bookmarks to the ones you have
  already saved.
• Creating networks amongst peer research partners.
• Building an online bookmarking community.

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Getting Started with Del.icio.us

• Register for Del.icio.us. Click registration link
  at the top right of this page http//del.icio.us
• Install browser toolbar buttons. You will be
  taken through this process. (Installs make the
  bookmarking process easier.)
• You will be sent an email within which you will
  validate your account.
• Anytime you want to bookmark a page, click the
  button you installed, and save that page.

(See handout for more details)
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Tagging
Tagging bookmarks opens up a whole new set of
features. You and other researchers can use an
agreed upon tag for sharing relevant
resources.Resource tags (yours and others) can
be subscribed to within your RSS account.
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Del.icio.us Ideas

• Create a network of users that have similar
  interests to yours. See what they are reading.
  Learn what they are learning.
• Add all of your students to your network. Monitor
  their usage.
• Save a link for someone else if you think it is
  something they would like to see. Simply tag the
  bookmark as forusername.
• Use the privacy feature at times to keep certain
  bookmarks private. These are not shared with the
  community.

(See handout for more details)
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Assignment

• Go to a few sites that you visit often. Use your
  browsers toolbar button and bookmark these sites
  in Del.icio.us. Be sure to tag them and give
  them descriptions.
• Ask for the username of another user in the
  class. Use the forusername tag to save a
  bookmark for them.
• Subscribe to someone elses set of bookmarks in
  Bloglines. The URL you will subscribe to will be
  http//del.icio.us/theirusername.

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Wikis
Wikis are websites that allow for collaborative
authorship.A user anywhere at anytime can add
to, edit or remove content.
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Wikipedia The Grandaddy of Them All
This online encyclopedia allows users from all
over the world to contribute to existing articles
or start new ones.Take a look at what one third
grade class decided to contribute.
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitot_house
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Editing Within Wikipedia
Editing Wikipedia articles is easy. Simply click
on the edit button for the section you wish to
edit. An editing window will appear for you to
make changes.
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Other Features of Wikipedia

• Check the pages history. This will allow you to
  watch how the page has changed over time.
• Subscribe to the pages history via RSS. You will
  be notified of any changes made to an article.
• Put frequently accessed articles in your
  watchlist (must be a registered member of
  Wikipedia).
• Use the discussion feature to talk about a
  particular article with other Wikipedia members.

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Assignment
1. Go to http//www.wikipedia.org and search for
the name of your home town. 2. Add a piece of
factual information to the page, then go back to
the article, and see the change that you
made. 3. Keep in mind that within minutes,
hours or days, the information you added might be
added upon or removed. These are living,
breathing documents.
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Important Information About Social Applications
The good news is that these applications are open
for all to use. The bad news is that these
applications are open for all to use.Often,
tools like the ones demonstrated here are blocked
by school filters. In the real world, we dont
often encounter filters. Therefore, it is up to
us to educate and model appropriate usage.