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Learn to use RSS and a personalized home pageto harness information that will hook studentsand get them more engaged in content!
F E E D M E
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Google lets you create a personalized homepage thatcontains a Google search box at the top, and your choice of any number of gadgets below. Gadgetscome in lots of di
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erent forms andprovide access to activities andinformation from all across the web, without ever having to leave youriGoogle page.Here are some things you can do with gadgets:View latest Gmail messages;Read headlines from Google Newsand other top news sources;Check out weather forecasts,stock quotes, and movie showtimes;Store bookmarks for quick accessto your favorite sites from any computer;Design your own gadget.Very useful as a personalized homepage, an iGoogle page is also a great way to organize relevant, currentcontent for students.We will work through the mechanicsof setting up a personalized homepage, search for useful content andshare ideas for using a personalizedhome page across the curriculum.
RSS
Really Simple Syndication ishow regularly updated websites —such as blog entries, newsheadlines, audio, and video — create‘feeds’ to push notice out to readerswhen new content is available.These Web feeds benefit contentcreators by letting them syndicatecontent automatically. The feedsbenefit readers who want tosubscribe to timely updates fromfavored websites or to aggregatefeeds from many sites into oneplace.Do you get magazines in the mail?Or do you check the newsstandeveryday waiting to see if there’s anew issue? Same concept applieswith RSS - instead of checkingwebsites each day for new content,you can subscribe with RSS and benotified automatically of changes!
AGGREGATOR
RSS feeds can be read usingsoftware called an RSS reader, feedreader, or aggregator. These toolscan be web-based, desktop-based,or mobile-device-based. Someexamples are Bloglines, GoogleReader, iGoogle, Netvibes,Pageflakes.
iGoogle as home page
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D E F I N E D
August 2009
Michelle Krill, mmkrill@gmail.com
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