Thing+4

So everyone participating in 23 Things now has a blog and we told you to read your fellow learners’ blogs. Are you thinking, “What, I have to click on 100+ bookmarks to see if anyone has updated?!? Forget it; waaaay too much time.” But what if you could visit all those blogs and more information sources in just one place and all at the same time? Would that be valuable to you? Well, you can! A lot smart people out there who like to keep up-to-date and save time have created services to make it easy to follow your favorite blogs and other information sources. It’s called RSS. [|RSS] stands for “ R eally S imple S yndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web. In the information world, RSS has changed the way news, media, and content creators share information, and it is changing the way everyday users are consuming information. Join the revolution by setting up a RSS account.
 * Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader**

=**Discovery Exercise:**= 1. [|Watch] this [|Common Craft video] about RSS and/or [|read more]. 2. Set up an aggregator account using Google Reader. It’s free. Follow the directions at [|Google Reader] (since you should already have a Google account for your blog). 3. You will want to add some of your fellow participants’ blogs to your Google Reader account. This will help you keep up-to-date on they have to say about the Things, their discoveries, and comments. You can add additional feeds for Web sites, news sites, podcasts, and more, too. 4. Blog about this experience on your blog! Don't know what to blog about? Here are some questions to ponder... These resources will give you more information on the hows and whys of RSS. **Challenge (optional)** If you already have a Google reader account, try out [|Bloglines], [|Netvibes] or any of the other RSS services and blog about your thoughts about each.
 * What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
 * How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?
 * How can teachers or media specialists use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
 * Which tool for finding feeds was easiest to use?
 * What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?
 * Find any great sources we should all add to our feed reader?
 * Resources**
 * [|Feed Me: A gentle introduction to Internet feeds] - a good tutorial from Palinet,
 * Will Richardson shares an excellent eleven page [|guide to RSS for educators].

Have fun finding and reading blogs (next thing!). But beware; it can be addictive!