Jorgie's Learning Blog: Tech Tip Tuesday: RSS What's in a feed?

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Tech Tip Tuesday: RSS What's in a feed?

Something happened a while back. You probably didn't even notice. A revolution occurred. There was a coup. HTML was supplanted by XML. Big deal right? The internet is still on your computer. You don't care. Well, if you want to learn a little bit of the history of XML and why it was a big deal you can always read more on Wikipedia.

But why does this matter to us? Well for educators there is a constant impetus to stay current. Staying up on what is going on can be a real challenge. It is often time-consuming and challenging to find the latest and greatest. What if the latest and greatest came to find you? That is what an RSS Feed is all about. RSS stands for Really Sinple Syndication and it allows a website to easily 'push' updates out. Or in reverse it allows any individual to pull updates from a site to them. You can find the RSS link an many web pages, but what do you do with it? Currently many email programs have an option to add RSS Feeds to your inbox. Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook both have a feed reader built into their mail system. Feeds are also at the heart of Podcast subscriptions. So what does the XML coup have to do with this. XML powers RSS feeds. These feeds allow you to subscribe to a whole shopping cart of things, from blogs, to news headlines. Even search results on some of your favorite sites. This blog and the other UEN Blogs all have their own RSS feeds. You can learn more about RSS feeeds on our UEN page devoted to them as well as links to some feeds to follow.

To learn more about a feed reader check out the CommonCraft video.