Module 3 : RSS Feeds and Podcasts

#5 RSS feeds

You’ve heard of RSS? You’ve seen those small tags on websites?

RSS is revolutionalizing the way news, media and content creators share information, but it also is swiftly changing the way everyday users are consuming information.

What is RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is a file format that enables website content to be delivered.
You can subscribe to multiple websites and have their syndicated content delivered to you on one page, similar to an email inbox.

You can have information sources, web pages by RSS and podcasts delivered to you through a newsreader or feedreader.

This week’s discovery exercises focus on learning about RSS news feeds and
setting up feed reader (a free online newsreader) for yourself to bring your feeds together.
There are numerous free feed readers.
Bloglines is an alternative that is used in the original Learning 2.0 program. For this exercise we will be using Google Reader.

Discovery Resources:

• Feed Me: A gentle introduction to Internet feeds - a good tutorial from Palinet, a library cooperative
• Google Reader introduction - succinct powerpoint introduction by Melanie Ngo
• SLV RSS feeds and information about feed readers
  

Discovery Exercises:

1. Follow the discovery resources above to learn more about RSS and newsreaders.
   
2. Using your blog username (email address) and password to login to Google Reader . You can view a good online tutorial about Google Reader here.
   
3. Subscribe to at least 3 feeds to your reader. (See below)
   

Feeds:

• news sites: A primary use is to allows efficient surveillance of news updates -The Age, ABC, NYTimes eg. top stories, books, business or finance, sport
• companies: Amazon eg. latest releases 'fantasy', 'science fiction','thriller'
  
• Libraries SLV and Recent Australian publications through Libraries Australia)
• Unshelved - Library cartoon feed

4. Create a post (#5 RSS) in your blog about this exercise.
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

#6 Podcasts

Podcasting is a convenient way of automatically downloading audio files to your computer. 'Podcast' generally refers to audio. 'Video Podcast' (or 'Vodcast') refers to the distribution of video files in the same manner.You can then play this audio or video on your computer or transfer the files to a portable MP3 or video player.

There’s a podcast for just about every interest area. You do not have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. All you need is a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is their directory associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

There are other podcast directories such as Podcast.com to use to search and locate podcasts or podcasts are increasingly available directly from organisation websites eg. SLV, ABC.

You can save the desired podcast to your PC or portable device.

You can subscribe to a regular feed of a podcast by downloading a small piece of software that manages all of your podcast subscriptions. When connected to the internet, the software searches for the latest edition of the program on our website, and will download the media file to a folder on your computer, where you can listen or watch it from there, or transfer it to your portable mp3/video player.

Discovery Exercises:

1. Take a look at Podcast.com , SLV podcasts or ABC and see if you can find a podcast that interests you.
   
2. You maybe able to listen to the podcast directly OR you will need to right click onto file, click onto 'Save link as ' to download. It will download to the desktop.
   
3. Listen to your podcast.
   
4. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here?
   Can you see use for podcasts in the library situation?