Having to go off and look at websites/blogs for updates is a right old pain the neck.
Did you know that you can have them bring news to you?
Watch this video about something called RSS.
You might have seen this icon on websites, or in the address bar of your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc).
This indicates that a feed is available from that site for you to subscribe to.
Find some sites you might like to subscribe to (hint: The Learning and teaching blog…. or this blog…). What about BBC Education News? Or HEFCE? What about the @ncllt Twitter?
Using a feed reader
You might prefer to collect all your news into one place. Options include:
Both are easy to set up and use and have free options. You can also set each one to email you when there is new content to read. So you don’t even have to remember to check out your Feedly/Flipboard/Netvibes account.
To subscribe from your browser
You can also subscribe from your browser:
- Internet Explorer
- Firefox – find the RSS feed of the site you want to subscribe to. Click on it. You will get a dialog box like this:
Click on Subscribe now, save to a folder and that’s it. To access your feeds go to Bookmarks in the Firefox toolbar and go to the folder you saved your feed to.
- Chrome – if you use Chrome as your default browser then you need to be able to add an extension to it. RSS Feed Reader or RSS Subscription Extension both work well and are easy to set up and use.
Your own blog that you set up in Thing 1 will also have a RSS feed, if it is not a private blog. You might like to share it with friends/colleagues. Why not jot down your thoughts/notes on having the news come to you on your blog? You might like to have a look at Nuala’s post on this Thing.
If you want to find out more about how RSS, the Library has written a comprehensive LibGuide: Keeping up to date with new information
If you have an iPad, Flipboard is an excellent way of subscribing to RSS feeds. To do this, follow these instructions:
https://flipboard.helpshift.com/a/flipboard/?f=discovering-and-organizing-content&s=ios
I’ve used Flipboard on my iPad and (when I had an) iPhone and found that really easy to use. I’m less familiar with subscribing to feeds in a browser. Twitter is also a useful alternative to feeds if you choose who you are following carefully.
Oooh it is lovely to see comments!
Keep ’em coming…..
I’m currently using Outlook for my RSS feeds – probably really old fashioned, but I like having all my work related ‘stuff’ in a single placed I’m used to Outlook. Am I missing out on useful things by doing it this way (e.g. email notifications of new posts) by doing it this way?
That’s interesting Richard, I was going to include this in this thing, but after checking with NUIT it seems that the RSS ingestion into Outlook is not universally enabled. Perhaps you could share how you are doing it?
I have added the Chrome Feed reader so will see how that goes!
Yes – I worked out how to subscribe to the feed for this blog and include a link to it in the IE toolbar!