Thing 5 - Subscribing to RSS Feeds

Subscribing to RSS Feeds

Now that you’ve created your Google Reader account, you will want to subscribe to your favorite blogs and other sites. You can subscribe to blogs and news sites because they offer “feeds” of their updated content. Traditional sites, typically not updated with new content every day or even every week, do not offer feeds, so you cannot subscribe to them.

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To complete Thing 5 you must:
A. Subscribe to blogs using three different methods
B. Search for blogs and subscribe to them
C. Reflect on Thing 5 on your blog

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A. Three Methods of Subscribing

There are various ways to subscribe to a feed. Follow the instructions and subscribe to the three blogs below:

1. Subscribe Button (This clip shows how to subscribe to Kathy Schrock's Kofffee Klatch.)  You may try any blog you wish, just look for the button!

2. Copy URL (This clip shows how to subscribe to subscribe to the little schoolhouse blog). You may try any blog you wish, just follow the steps!

3. Mozilla Firefox Button (This clip shows how to subscribe to subscribe to Free Things for Teachers.)  You may try any blog you wish, just follow the steps!

B. Search and Subscribe

Now that you know how to subscribe, it’s time to find blogs of interest. Have a look at these two blog search tools and subscribe to any interesting blogs you stumble across. Search for blogs that fit into one of the four folders you created in Thing 4.

Google Blog Search: This is a keyword search. Just type in your search term(s) – all your results will be from blogs and not other sites. Do notice that your search results indicate how long ago the blog posting was made.

Technorati: Click “advanced search” on the upper right to see the search options. Try searching by keyword, then scroll down and try searching by tag to find posts related to your topics of interest. There is also a blog directory search which will bring up blogs related to your search topic. 

C. Reflect - Blog Prompts for Thing 5

RSS can be a difficult concept for some to grasp right away - what questions do you have? What didn't work or doesn't make sense? How might you use RSS in your personal or professional life? Find anything in your searching that you'd recommend to others?