Monday, August 25, 2008

Blogging, RSS, and Google Reader

10:19







(Warning: more shameless promotion of our blog community.)

I promise that I'm not going to talk about this every week but I did want to start out with blogging for two reasons. First, I wanted to make sure everyone knew we'd created some video tutorials to help you create a blog. If you've never blogged before, it may seem like something only techno-nerds can understand, but it is remarkably easy. Everyone is welcome to participate at whatever level they wish.

If you do decide to create a blog, send me the URL so that I can include it in our directory. Look for the blog directory link on the main Liberal Studies website. If you would like to participate and feel unsure of how to create and use a blog, contact me. If you want to participate, I'll create a blog for you - you'll be an expert user before you know it.

The second reason to start with blogging is that it feeds into this week's technology - RSS feeds and RSS readers. These two concepts can really help you learn more and experience more in the online world by bringing everything you enjoy into one place. For example, (one last shameless promotion) we currently have 15 students blogging but I'm not visiting their blog every day to see if they've posted something. I've brought all of their blogs together into Google Reader. To get an idea of how this looks, visit the public site of my Reader.

If you'd like to know more about RSS, you can read some good information at http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html