Really Simple Syndication?
I’ve been learning about RSS over the last few weeks to keep track of various sites, and specifically the blogs of the students of the course I’m teaching. I’ve been using Google Reader, and enjoying playing around with it. However, there’s still lots that I find confusing.
Firstly, I’m not sure I’m using feeds correctly. One thing I don’t like about the usual feed:// urls is that they seem to obliterate the formatting of the original post, including stripping them of their images. So I’ve simply been putting the normal http:// url into Google Reader - which, so far, has worked ok.
However, some of the students are keeping their blogs by adding various pages, instead of posting everything sequentially in one place. This means that my reader doesn’t pick up these pages, or changes to them. I wonder if there is a way to track any changes within a domain…?
The other thing I need to keep track of is comments. After a bit of googling, I’ve been adding a separate subscription for each site, in the following format:
http://domain.com/?feed=comments-rss2
This seems to work ok - though it doesn’t seem to work for specific sections of sites (such as categories, etc.).
Finally, I’m trying to aggregate all this to make it easy for students to set up their own RSS systems. I’ve created a “bundle” in Google Reader, and I’ve exported an OPML file (after a fair bit of very odd Google Reader faff, I have to say). Now it remains to be seen whether the students will be able to use what I’ve done. 
Any RSS-related help would be appreciated. What works for you?
February 10th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
Thanks for the bundle.. found it very helpful. I also spend some time googling for an answer to get rss feed from separate pages of the wiki, but unfortunately had no luck! I’ve learnt that you can get feeds from any page into the google reader, but still couldn’t solve the original problem, sorry!
February 11th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Cormac, do you know http://www.pageflakes.com ? I am not sure, if it can help, see e.g. example feed collection from the WV course “Facilitating online”: http://www.pageflakes.com/foc09
It looks on first view too much info, complex. Not used myself, since I also use google reader
But at least minimizes effort for students new to this all by just going to a website.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:05 am
Hi Cormac,
cool that you’re teaching a course. It can be a really good way of both pushing the limits of your own knowledge, being forced to explore a wider field of knowledge, and getting new ideas from the students.
We experienced a lot of the same issues with rss, both in the initial David Wiley course on Open Ed, which was run only using blogs (and a wiki just to hold the curriculum, with no editing), and then in the first P2PU pilot, where we used a combination of a wiki and Wordpress multiuser, and where people set up their courses differently. Some had each participant write on their own blogs, some gave everyone edit access to the course blog. Of the latter, some wanted each student to post their own entries, whereas others mostly had students comment on “starting entries” that they made. It was very interesting to see how certain courses were more or less successful.
The question of sucking in comments is definitively tricky. It also goes to the question - if I want to comment on somebody else’s work (in such a setting), should I write a new post on my blog, referring their contribution, or should I leave a comment on their blog?
It’s also interesting to see how for example Twitter, FriendFeed, now Google Buzz, as well as comment plugins all try to handle this. But I feel the perfect solution is still far away… Hope you keep the blogging up!
March 15th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Hi all, and thanks for the comments! I’m so sorry they didn’t appear until now - I didn’t see the notifications for them - bah!