Using & Teaching Educational Technology
Be alerted!
By Terry Freedman
Thu, 11 Aug 2005, 08:28

We've heard a lot, over the years, about the mythical age of the future in which customised newspapers -- that is, customised by the reader -- will be delivered without fail every day. Well, there's no need to wait: the future is here.

Thanks to a relatively new set of innovations, you can now set select the news or other information you want, and have it brought to you.

Now, you may not think this is such a big deal. After all, how much effort is it to visit a few websites every day, or to subscribe to a few newsletters? The answer, on the face of it, is "not much" -- but the key word is "few". Once you start subscribing to ten or more sources of information, you can get to the point where you're spending almost as much time looking for the stuff as you are reading it.

Case in point: for the regular e-briefing I compile for subscribers to the ICT in Education premium service, I consult at least 20 sources of information every week. (I stopped counting when I reached 20.) Clearly, the more I can automate this information-gathering process, the longer I'll retain my sanity -- and the higher will be the quality of the finished product because I'll be concentrating my energies on reading and writing rather than hunting.

To make this all happen, you need two things: something called a news aggregator (because it aggregates news from different sources) and a web link known as an RSS feed. Don't worry about all this technobabble, because you don't need to understand any of it for it to work!

All you need to do is this:

1. Go to www.bloglines.com

2. Open an account there: it's free, and takes about 3 minutes.

3. Go to the website which contains the information you're interested in.

4. Click on the icon for Bloglines, if there is one. If there isn't, click on the RSS icon, an then select the URL in the address bar at the top of your internet browser. Then copy the address to the clipboard, eg by selecting Edit-Copy. Then go to Bloglines, log into your account and click on the Add button, and then paste the link into the box and click OK.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for every information source that you're interested in.

6. Whenever you're on the internet, log in to your account at Bloglines. Any new content on any of the websites you've added will show up on the left hand side.

7. You can read the articles in the right-hand pane, or click straight through to the website.

This is a summary of the process which will get you going in a very short period of time. If you'd like more information, presented in a very readable and non-technical manner, download Will Richardson's free guide on the subject:

http://www.weblogg-ed.com/rss_for_ed

Before you do, however, why not try this process out for updates to the ICT in Education website? New material is posted at least once a week, and often at least once a day. Why take the chance of missing something, when you can be told about it in such an unobtrusive manner? You'll find the Bloglines icon near the top of the page on the left hand side at http://www.ictineducation.org.

Incidentally, I don't have shares in Bloglines! There are other news aggregators around, but Bloglines is (a) very easy to use and (b) web-based, so you'll be able to check for updates from anywhere in the world.

In Computers in Classrooms #16 (ie the one after next), we'll be looking at all this in greater detail, including blogging and podcasting.

© Terry Freedman Thu, 11 Aug 2005