As detailed in my previous post on the subject, RSS reader applications can save a great deal of time and enhance productivity by providing a simple way to monitor novel content from a great many Web-based resources. In addition to allowing users to easily subscribe to and view current content using RSS feeds, RSS reader applications, such as the FeedDemon desktop application for Windows, often provide advanced capabilities for sorting and searching RSS-enabled information.

Produced the a company called NewsGator, FeedDemon is a free and provides features that users who have subscribed to a lot of RSS feeds in different subject areas will appreciate. It allows users to organize RSS feeds into folders, “flag” important posts for future viewing, perform keyword searches on feeds, and create saved searches to automatically monitor RSS-feeds from many different Web sites for particular keywords.
I’ve demonstrated some of these features in this week’s screencast.

Like e-mail applications, most RSS-readers have the same general features and stand out in certain areas. FeedDemon seems to have some excellent reporting capabilities. Google Reader provides integration with the other Google services for sharing feeds and searching for RSS-enabled Web sites. I will use NetNewsWire (Mac) for my demonstration next week.

What is your favorite RSS reader application? What do you think of “FeedDemon”?

-Jim
(behnke@fordham.edu)

Additional Links of Interest:

American Psychological Association’s RSS feeds to online journals
The Free Library: find RSS feeds to academic journals, newspapers, magazines and more either by using the search feature or selecting a topic from listed categories
List of RSS feeds to American Chemical Society Publications
List of RSS feeds to American Meteorological Society Publications

RSS feeds to:
Scientific American
Discover
Christian Science Monitor
New York Times
Wall Street Journal

We live in a world where time is precious and the amount of new information that appears every day on any given topic can be overpowering.  RSS feeds and RSS reader applications can be very powerful tools for students and professionals who want to tame “information overload” while keeping up with the latest information in their areas of Interest and expertise.

How can I use a Feed Aggregator to follow RSS feeds?

When RSS feed links are copied into an RSS reader such as Google Reader (web based), Feeddemon (for MS Windows), or NetNewsWire (Mac OSX), the user has “subscribed” to the feed and will be able to viewsummaries of the latest content from the subscribed Web site from within the RSS reader.  By subscribing to multiple feeds in an area of interest, or “aggregating” feeds, users can user their RSS reader applications to browse, search, and sort content from many Web sites without having to visit them individually.

This capability can save a great deal of time and allow users to use information from the Web much more productively.

For this week’s screencast, I’ve created a brief demonstration of how to use the Google Reader RSS application to subscribe to an RSS-enabled Web site. If you are new to the idea of using a feed reader, it’s probably best to start out with using Google Reader.  However; there many different feed readers available for any platform with a variety of interfaces.  Here’s a chart comparing the different features of three popular feedreaders: Bloglines, Google Reader, and Newsgator with a list of pros and cons for each.  If you are looking for a list of feed aggregators and tools, take a look at Mashable’s Ultimate RSS Toolkit.  RSS feeds and RSS readers can be used to easily and effectively keep up with the latest news headlines, journal abstracts, blog entries, and organizational activities.
Are you currently using an RSS reader application to make the Web’s latest, greatest content manageable and useful?  Can you provide any examples of great RSS-enabled Web sites? Please leave your ideas in the comment section or email them to me at jbehnke@fordham.edu or Kristen at treglia@fordham.edu.  We would love to hear from you!!!

Additional Links of Interest:

Kristen’s pageflake uses RSS feeds to keep up with teacher blogs and education news.
List of “100 Most Subscribed to RSS Feeds” with descriptions, link to original site, and copy of the rss feed
ITAC Blog entry rss feed/

We had a great turnout of about 50 faculty members at our Spring meeting of the Faculty Forum on Teaching and Technology, first at Lincoln Center on Tuesday and then at Rose Hill on Wednesday.

Using discussion boards, preventing plagiarism, and using Blackboard were discussed at length at both sessions. The presentation on discussion boards along with resources and links have all been posted to the Faculty Forum on Teaching and Technology.

For those faculty who were unable to attend but would like access to resource materials posted on blackboard and would like to participate in future events, please send us an email and we will enroll you in the organization:  blackboard@fordham.edu

View more pictures of the Faculty Forum on our new Flickr page!!

Here are examples of some of the resources posted in the Faculty Forum on Teaching and Technology Organization on Blackboard:

Assignments given with examples of forums set up on the Discussion Board page 1, page 2, and page 3 (there is a PDF version available in the organization) as well as links to tips on facilitating discussion boards.

Links to other resources on the web:

Search, edit, or download a rubric at iRubric, this is a copy of the rubric used in the presentation on discussion boards given.

Sample grading schemes and rubrics, and tips on “Generating and Facilitating Engaging and Effective
Online Discussions” (PDF)