RSS, podcasting- Will Richardson

A full day workshop needs more than one blog item. In the afternoon we whizzed through RSS, podcasting.... The important message is that this will engage students, give authentic audiences, bring in authentic up-to-date materials for critical thinking. How do we engage the teachers?

Real Simple Syndication - feeds of information can go to an aggregator. If you want to search on Google for a feed, you can add RSS to your search. e.g. New York Times RSS. You can also see the sign on the site that there is a feed.

Aggregator - Bloglines.com It is easy to set up. (The bigger problem is that you soon have way too much to read!).

Flickr - photo feed
can subscribe to photos on a particular topic
In Del.icio.us can find articles on a particular topic - can subscribe
Can find others who are reading on a topic. Can go to an individual. You can then subscribe to that individual's list on that topic. You can have researchers 24/7 just by subscribing to what they are reading. Tagging on a social site because we want to share it.

You can really mine the intellectual prowess of other people to inform your own practice.

You can take RSS feeds and put them together (mashups) in a web page to share with others.
suprglu.com

Feed2JS - if you have a static web page into which you want to bring RSS content. Put in the feed address. Generate the javascript. You can aggregate content on a page on a particular topic. You can follow your eBay auctions, track packages.....

You should check your bloglines account daily. You can create your own newspaper e.g. education feed from NY Times, science feed from CBC, music from

When working with kids - use Furl - Furl saves a picture of the page. If the page goes, the document is still there. You can also create citations with Furl in MLA, Chicago, and APA.

Podcasting - much more than recording audio
Room 208 Bob Sprankle in Maine
Radio Willow Web - Tony Vincent
Mabryonline Tyson

1. Have to be able to record audio - Audacity (if you don't have a Mac with Garageband) You also need the lame encoder. That's what will allow you to export as mp3

2. Need a way to edit audio (same software)

can bring in another track

3. Publish as an mp3 file
4. Get mp3 file onto a server that creates a link to it.

You can upload to ourmedia.org (free) - they will give you the link. You can then link it to your blog.

5. A podcast is a series - that can be subscribed to

At podcasts - submit a podcast

Odeo - login and odeo will allow you to record through the web interface. This is a quick a dirty way - it gives you a link. It gives you a piece of code that you can paste into your blog.

Camtasia - easy video editing software will create video iPod format. (not free)
Screencasting - capture screen while you are talking - windows media encoder (PC only)

How do we get teachers enthusiastic about these technologies?
...small steps

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