Rich Site Summary (RSS) or Real Simple Syndication (RSS)
- Challenge: To find a way to bring content from an area or topic of interest directly into your course site as "headlines" that are updated whenever the publishing site updates it's information.
- Answer: RSS
Rich Site Summary (RSS) or Real Simple Syndication (RSS) provides an open method of syndicating and aggregating web content. Using RSS files, websites create data feeds that supply headlines, links, and article summaries of their site. And you can use these RSS files, or feeds, from these sites to provide your site (whithin or without WebCT) with current news headlines.
Once incorporated, RSS keeps your page from having stagnant links. You and your students get access to news that gets continually updated with litle effort. Because it is simple to create, RSS has been adopted by inceasing numbers of news syndication services, weblogs and other online information services.
How does it work?
RSS Feeds
If you see web sites or blogs that feature these little icons, know that you can pull content from that site into your page. When a website has an RSS feed, it is said to be “syndicated”. Click on the icon to access the RSS feed, written in a text-based format called XML ( a set of HTML-like tags), with file extension .xml, .rss, or .rdf. . You need to know that only because often RSS files are labeled as XML. Another source of RSS feeds is RSS "aggregators" that read RSS files from a large number of sites, and place this information into a larger data base allowing for structured searches or customized feeds, e.g. Newsisfree.com.
Parse and Display your RSS feed
Since RSS files are written in XML, they have to be parsed into a web-friendly language like HTML first to diplay on your website. You have two choices here. You can either install one of the parsing programs on your server or you can point to an external parsing program residing on someone else's server. Once parsed, the code is ready to be added to your webpage and VOILA!
Steps for adding RSS feeds to WebCT Vista
- Go to the the RSS source. For example, if the website you want to syndicate has an RSS icon, that is your source. Or you could search for source through an aggregator like Newsisfree. www.newsisfree.com
- Click on the RSS icon to open the XML page of the news source. Click the URL in the address bar of the browser and copy it.
- Open a free XML to Javascript convertor aka the parser. The one we recommend is Feed2JS.
- Paste the XML URL in the textbox titled " URL Enter the web address of the RSS Feed" and set the various parameters as per your needs.
- Click the Preview button to get an idea about how the RSS feed will look on your page.
- Click the Generate Javascript button to get the script and copy it
Perform the following steps for adding the RSS feed to WebCT Vista
- From the Build tab (Basic View), click on Content File under Add to Home Page. Choose Create Content File.
- Add a page Title. Paste the Javascript in the Content window and keep HTML Creator to “OFF”.
- Check the checkbox for Use HTML and hit Save.
- The Content file is on the Homepage. Use the Student View to see the new page with the headlines. Cloick on any of the headlines to read article on the journal/news site.
For questions or to request a demo, please email Madhuri at mkumar3@uh.edu.
RSS Resources
- An Introduction to RSS for Educational Designers
http://www.downes.ca/files/RSS_Educ.htm - An introduction to RSS news feeds
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/w-rss.html#resources - All About RSS
http://www.faganfinder.com/search/rss.shtml#what
RSS Feed Readers
- RSS readers
http://blogspace.com/rss/readers - RSSxpress Lite
http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/lite/include/
News and information on the RSS format: http://blogspace.com/rss/resources
