Edublogs Tutorials

What a great video this is – I highly recommend it to those trying to engage others in a discussion on why to use web2.0 tools in the classroom or for CPD

Firstly, why would you want to do this?

I have the BBC news sent directly to my blog and it is updates automatically – so no work for me.

There should be a plugin called Aggr which makes this task really easy and it seems to have now disappeared – hence the reason my feed was not working.

To work around this, you need to use a third party (free) site called Pageflakes.

• sign up for Pageflakes
• if you are very visual, you can use this to read all your feeds
• you can import these feeds from another reader if you want to try and see how it looks
• there’s a menu button (literally a button)
• in there you will see on the LHS  ‘add RSS feed’
• click on this and ad the rss feed for the site you want to use
• you can choose to import all your feeds
• add your opml file where is asks
• you get this file by clicking the ‘export’ option in your reader
• in google, it says ‘manage my subscriptions’
• this will bring all your feeds in for you to see and use
• choose the feed you want to add to your blog
• click on the email logout the top of the feed box
• choose ‘take a flake’
• copy the code
• note the page will need to be set to public in order to work
• paste the code into a post using the ‘html’ tab or
• paste it into a sidebar widget box
• voila

check out my BBC news feed

Imagine your email system – lots of people send you an email ant they all arrive conveniently in one place – your inbox

All you then do is read the ones you want to. It even tells you which ones you have read.

Well, RSS does the same for you with blogs and websites – it sends new information from any source (which has RSS buttons) to you and you can view lots of feeds from the same place

Please note: currently this is not available, but James assures me it will be added to plugins soon

The steps are fairly simple

1. Log in to your admin section
2. click on plugins
3. choose ‘aggr’ and click on activate
4. now copy the little bit of example code it shows you
5. <!–rss url=”http://perassi.org/feed/“–>
6. Yes, you will need all of it!
7. I have bolded a bit of it you will need to replace later
8. Start up a new post – or more possibly, a new page
9. Give it a title and then click on the “code” tab
10. paste this into the code section
11. Now the clever bit
12. get the rss address of the site you want
13. to do this, right click on the RSS logo on the site you want to feed from – see above
14. click on Copy shortcut or copy link location – whichever one turns up
15. now replace the bit in bold with your feed address – it’s between the ” ” marks
16. then publish
17. now you will have the last 10 posts being pulled in directly to your site

Here we go

RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication and it is – sometimes, honestly, however, without help it took me 6 months to GET IT!

Imagine your email system – lots of people send you an email ant they all arrive conveniently in one place – your inbox

All you then do is read the ones you want to. It even tells you which ones you have read.

Well, RSS does the same for you with blogs and websites – it sends new information from any source (which has RSS buttons) to you and you can view lots of feeds from the same place

The steps are fairly simple

1. get an RSS reader – just Google for that or use Google reader
2. you can choose an online one – if you travel around lots & use different pcs
3. or, like me, use a software based one
4. there are lots to choose from
5. I like my one because I can save all me feeds in case I lose them
6. I can also send these to someone else
7. haven’t found an online one that does this, as I would want to transfer mine all in one go, not one at a time
8. eg Google reader online
9. blog express software based – what I use – ok but sometimes crashes on my pc anyway
10. register or download – all free stuff, whichever you choose
11. now to subscribe
12. open your reader
13. look for the subscribe or add a feed button
14. I tend to right click on the one that says RSS or atom
15. copy link location
16. I then paste this into my new feed box or new subscription
17. the reader should check that it is working
18. you feed is now connected
19. every time you have new stuff to read, when you open your reader, it will inform you
20. to get RSS feed from this site, go to the very bottom of the page and get RSS for posts
21. Find the RSS button and follow the instructions
22. you’ll be connected for ever
23. enjoy