Possible exercises to introduce news aggregation

A general note for the trainers: These exercises are about having trainees experience what RSS is and how aggregation services work. When no new items are submitted to the feed trainees have selected during these exercises it is possible trainees don’t get a good idea of how aggregation is working. If possible, make sure you have one or more feeds that you manage as a trainer so you can add to that feed during the training in order to give trainees an idea of how the concept of aggregation works.

*Discuss 1*

Talk with trainees how they have been using the web to find information of their interest. Let them list for example 5 sources they regularly check, possibly a few websites, one Google search query and one mailing list.

*Exercise 1*

Objectives: Get acquainted with RSS. Learn how RSS is used by web content providers that the trainees are already using or that otherwise relate to their work.

A. For each of the online sources (websites, google search) try to find out whether it provides some sort of RSS feed.

-> Trainer: If users weren’t able to mention any sources, the trainer could give some suggestions like Eldis, or a subsite of the Development Gateway. Preferably sites with content relevant to the trainees’ day to day work or field of interest.

• See if you can find a link often visualized by an orange icon like one of the following: - - .
• If you can’t find a link to an RSS feed, enter the address of the website you are looking at on Google (e.g. the Eldis web address) and indicate that you would like to find files with the rss or xml format that are provided by this site. E.g. search in Google on:

site:www.eldis.org filetype:xml

B. Take a look at the feed in your browser.

• Try to list the various elements of which the feed exists.

Trainer: title, description, tags, …

• What type of content does this feed provide?

Trainer: text, image, …

• Compare the feeds of the various sources. What are the differences and what the similarities?

*Discuss 2*

What are current methods of keeping yourself updated via online resources?

Trainer: Search on Google to learn more about a topic? Read emails from mailing lists or newsletter services. Regularly checking homepage for new information. Do trainees prefer working online, offline (downloading web content and browsing it there), via email or other?

*Exercise 2*

Objectives: Learn more about possibilities to personally manage your online information sources by using an RSS aggregator. Learn what tools suit your personal working style and possibly the limitations of your working environment (e.g. internet access issues). Create a basic understanding of the pro’s and con’s of working with personal content aggregators.

A. Create an account at an online or offline RSS aggregator and subscribe to the sources of your list.

Trainer: Suggest online (e.g. Bloglines) or offline (see list of possibilities at http://www.newsonfeeds.com/faq/aggregators) freeware. Either let users select the tool of their choice, which provides a starting point for comparing tools or suggest one specific tool you recommend to make sure trainees can compare how they are using this tool. Use this module’s Bloglines unit for support on how to use the Bloglines online content aggregator.

• Try to subscribe to some websites, a Google search result, a mailinglist (using the email feature of Bloglines).

Trainer: if users have been using other tools like social bookmarking, online photo sharing or blogging, try and have them subscribe to a source via this tool (a user or tag or combination).

B. Analyze the tool you have been using. (E.g. View a feed, browse through its items and refresh. What happens? See if you can find a way to keep an item ‘unread’.

• What are the features of the tool?
• How can you use them to personalize the use of your aggregator?
• What settings do you prefer and why those settings?

Trainer: E.g. several feed options, store feeds in folders, private or public feed subscription, keep items unread, view complete feed item or description only, show an old item if it is updated or don’t, let others view your list of subscriptions.

C. (Trainer: If used Bloglines?) Send your neighbour your public list of subscriptions. Your neighbour sends you his/her’s. Compare these lists.

• What sources did your neighbour subscribe to?
• Did you know all these sources?
• How are they organized, e.g. in folders?

D. Discuss with your neighbour what choices you both made in setting up your subscriptions. What did you learn from each other? What are other options for use?

*Exercise 3*

Objectives: Learn more about possibilities for managing your information sources via email.

A. Subscribe to the feed of the sources in your list.

Trainer suggest several tools (e.g. RMail or FeedBlitz) so users can compare these or select one tool to make the experience of using the tool exchangeable.

• Try to subscribe to some websites and a Google search result.

Trainer: if users have been using other tools like social bookmarking, online photo sharing or blogging, try and have them subscribe to a source via that tool (a user or tag or combination).

• If the websites on your list are not providing an RSS feed, you can use for instance FeedFire that creates an RSS feed. You can create a feed for that site and then subscribe via email.

*Discuss 3*

Discuss your personal experiences with using aggregator tools. Do you feel this can add something or improve the way you are dealing with information sources now? Do you feel it has any disadvantages.

Trainer: possibly address topic of information overload when subscribing to too many feeds that are all of your specific interest (interesting people, interesting topics).

*Exercise 4*

Objective: define…

A. Add a rss feed to your website.

Trainer: E.g. via Feed2JS. Trainees need to have a website that they can edit. If not, either do this together with the trainees on one website that is managed by the trainer or prepare this at home and show the source and walk step by step trhough the feed building process.

• What are the possibilities of adapting the feed?

Trainer: You can customize the number of items you want to show in the feed (5 latest, 10 latest), indicate if you do (not) want to overwrite specific HTML code provided in the feed content (e.g. symbols & # é or hyperlinks), display title only, or also the description, the name of the source, etcetera. All of this influences how large the size of the feed is that you will be publishing on your website and therefore influences how fast the feed will load.

• What settings do you prefer and why  discuss.
• If time allows publish a feed with all options ‘on’ (include HTML, full descriptions, 20 items at a time) and one with as less content as possible and compare the download time.

*Exercise 5*

Create a combined feed on a topic using either Suprglu (provides a whole webpage) or FeedDigest.

Trainer: can be slow

- ….

What are possible uses of providing feeds to others?

 Create your own educational wiki!HelpPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS