Wednesday, March 19, 2008

#8 week 4: RSS and access

Today's lesson is all about RSS feeds. I have added a couple to my iGoogle page. This seems to be a better access point for me than Google Reader. I like the fact that the iGoogle page can be re-arranged and also that it features access to many different things, comics, gmail, google talk, date, time, weather, news, games... Google Reader represents one more place to look for information updates. I think Reader is effective for some folks who check out many sources of information and many blogs on a relatively regular basis. For me, there are only a few that I keep up with and there are other solutions I have found to be more accessible to me.

I have added an RSS feed to my library website from the SFGate, local news. I haven't used this with a class yet, but I came really close to convincing a teacher to letting me teach students how to create one for specific research projects. By creating a specific Google New search and adding that RSS to one's iGoogle page or to a email alert, students can get daily or weekly news updates on a research topic for example, pending legislation or court cases for a Government class.

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