Tool #9: RSS Feeds & News Readers

There are a lot of websites out there, and most of us have certain websites that we check regularly. Now that we are all "following" different colleagues' blogs, we have even more websites to check. What if you could check for updates of all your favorite blogs, online newspapers and other regularly-updated sites by visiting one simple page? That's the beauty of RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. You may have noticed that some of your favorite websites have little orange icons that look like the one on the left.


This orange RSS icon lets you know that you can subscribe to the website using a news reader, or aggregator, such as Google Reader or Bloglines. You simply have to create an account with one of these news readers and then start adding websites that have RSS feeds. Watch this Common Craft video to learn more about RSS feeds and Google Reader:



Unfortunately, Google Reader is being taken down on July 1, 2013, so we will begin using Bloglines as the alternative solution. If you already have established a Google Reader account be sure to use Google Takeout to archive your data for import into Bloglines or another reader. You will need to be logged in to the Google account you used to create your Google Reader account in order for Takeout to find your data.

Your job for Tool #9 is to sign up for a Bloglines account, add the blogs of the colleagues you're following, plus at least 3 other blogs, online newspapers, or websites to your reader. Chances are, some of the websites you already visit a lot have RSS feeds available! Post about your experiences with Bloglines, if you think you would use it, and how you could use it professionally.

Here are some education-related sites with RSS feeds to get you started:

• Education Week
• Education News- The New York Times
• U.S. Department of Education
• NPR (They even have an Education-specific feed you can choose)

And here are some award-winning blogs from people in the field:

• Sup Teach?
• Sweeney Math
• f(t)
• Dot Physics
• Teaching in the 408
• think:lab

To search for other blogs that are of special interest to you, go to a blog-specific search engine, such as BlogSearchEngine or Google Blogs.

So, to complete Tool #9:

• Sign up for Bloglines. Use your personal e-mail account.
• Add the blogs of the colleagues you're following to your new reader account
• Add at least 3 other blogs, online newspapers, or websites
• Write a post reflecting on your experience with RSS feeds and news readers