What is an RSS feed?
Enjoy and learn from RSS in Plain English, a Commoncraft Show, on YouTube.
What is a widget?
A widget is a symbol that contains html code that you can just click on to navigate the web. You'll see them all over the internet, including web pages, blogs & wikis.
These are pictures of some common widgets:
How are we using RSS feeds at the State Library?
Look for the RSS feed widgets at each of these sites:
How can we keep track of all our RSS feeds?
You can use a "reader" to aggregate all your RSS feeds into one place. Here are two examples of sites where you can create your own reader, and check out Kris's sample Bloglines page and see all the links she has.
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Google Reader Tutorial,
a Commoncraft video on YouTube |
Site for searching, subscribing, creating & sharing news feeds, blogs & the web. |
Customized Internet Start Pages
Using a reader is fine for just your blogs, but for one-stop shopping for all your blogs, bookmarks, wikis, photos, web pages and everything else you do on the web,you can create a personalized home page.
Take a look at the "Custom Home Pages" Kris has developed which include links to things like RSS feeds to blogs, a calendar, to-do lists, calculator widget.
Where can I build a customized start page?
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Create your own web start page to keep you up to date on your blogs and news resources. You can also add photos, calendars, email and to do lists |
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Another customizable start page, including the capability of adding web feeds and cool Google gadgets. |
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A multi-lingual personalized home/start page. Netvibes is organized into tabs, with each tab containing user-defined modules. Modules include an RSS feed reader, weather forecasts, bookmarks, notes, to-do lists, multiple searches, and email. |
How are we using customized pages at the State Library?
Some of us have developed iGoogle pages. We don't have to go take the time to log in to each of the blogs we participate in, we can just go to our reader page and scan them right there. And if we decide to go to the blog pages, a click will get us there.
Learning Activities
1. Create a customized web page using any of the above.
2. Add at least 5 gadgets or modules to your page.
3. Comment in your blog on your experiences creating an account and what kind of links you added.
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