Saturday, July 25, 2009

Thing 8 Week 4 - RSS Feeds

Using Google Reader and igoogle as my home page has allowed me to subscribe to various RSS feeds, and have them available through those two sites, rather than clogging my email. I went to various news sites, adding some to the igoogle news page, and others as Google Reader, both of which eventually end up on the igoogle site--as I linked the Google Reader to the igoogle news page. I love the fact that I’m given the choice of where it’s delivered. I now understand how it's all tied together, and the simplicity of it is overwhelming!
I appreciated the tutorial provided in this lesson, and learned a lot about ways to increase use of RSS. Because I'm working on a blog for the local quilter's guild, many of whom have no idea what a blog is, let alone an RSS feed, I appreciated the help found on Problogger - How to make your RSS feeds pop!, specifically, "If your blog is on a non techie topic with a readership who doesn’t have much awareness of RSS write a post that explains what RSS is and how it can help them follow your site. Then add a link to that post under your RSS button to help educate them." This is great.
Providing simple ways for the library aides in our district to follow a library blog is important, and I found several useful hints on this site, and others linked from this lesson. I can forsee providing inservice instruction on how to use and get involved with such a blog.

2 comments:

  1. I agree that the tutorial is really useful. Until I took this class myself I really didn't "get" the RSS thing but now I really appreciate the facility of RSS feeds. It does help me keep on top of some professional blogs even if I have to force myself to sometimes just mark them read even if I haven't actually read them. The truth is that there are way too many blogs (feeds) and just like books.....not enough time.

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  2. That's great! Time is an issue with me as well and I can't get to read all the feed I subscribe to, but it's a nice change to have information come to me (for a change) instead of me searching it out.

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