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Blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS) This article is to let you know about a technology that has been around for a while although has seemingly not caught on yet with school counselors – Blogging and Real Simple Syndication or RSS. Blogging technology has the potential to more easily and efficiently help you deliver important information (e.g., scholarship, parenting, valuable web sites, etc.) to your students and stake holders. You've probably heard the term blog more than once, most likely used on television or print news media. However, you may still not exactly understand what a blog is. According to the Webopedia (see http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/blog.html), a blog, short for "web log", is a web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated on a daily basis, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. Google owned Blogger.com describes a blog as, "A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world." Blogs are also now common staple for any professional that needs to provide timely and important information to his or her constituents, subscribers, or interested others.Creating a blog is simple and free and it only takes a few minutes. Begin by entering your name, e-mail address and a few other pieces of (usually personal) information. You select "the look" (template) for your blog from a set of standard options, click a few buttons, and another blog has been added to the "blogosphere." Once the blog is set up you can post text, links, audio and video to your hearts delight. From a computer or cell phone, you can say or show anything and everything. With a bit of know-how, you can even easily syndicate to other blogs and web sites. According to HowStuffWorks.com (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/blog1.htm), blogs feature several unique characteristics such as:A typical blog has a main page and nothing else. On the main page, there is a set of entries. Each entry is a little text blurb that may contain embedded links out to other sites, news stories, etc. When the author adds a new entry, it goes at the top, pushing all the older entries down. This blog also has a right sidebar that contains additional permanent links to other sites and stories. The author(s) might update the sidebar weekly or monthly. A blog is organized in reverse-chronological order, from most recent entry to least recent. A blog is normally public -- the whole world can see it (although some services allow for password protected blogs as well). The entries in a blog usually come from a single author (although can easily be developed by a committee, team, or other group of individuals). The tools that most bloggers use make it incredibly easy to add entries to a blog any time they feel like it. The technology that allows individuals like school counselors (or organizations, especially news agencies) to write one's own blog is so relatively simple and inexpensive that it is no surprise they have proliferated the Web as fast as they have. Here are just a few of the services available. Blogger ( BBlog ( http://www.bblog.com/): bBlog is a powerful, elegant personal publishing system written in PHP and released as free, Open Source software under the GPL. It is a flexible but simple way to blog that works for blogging beginners, and can grow into a more advanced user's needs.TypePad ( http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/): Similar to blogger, another blogging service although this one has a minimal cost.LiveJournal ( http://www.livejournal.com/): Joining this service site is free although users can choose to upgrade their accounts for extra features.Moveable Type ( http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/): "Movable Type is a blogging and content management platform for professional bloggers and medium and small businesses. There is a free version although it comes with no support.With a bit of know how, you can even have your blog published on your own counseling website (you will have to work with your school technology professionals to do this on your school or district server). For instance, upon setting up a blog at Blogger.com, click on the Advanced Options which allows you to direct your blog to a folder on your own website. An example of this is how the Florida School Counselor Association posts news and legislative information. What is really neat is that once your blog is established, you can set it up so that you can post to it directly via e-mail! That’s right. Just send an e-mail to a special address known only to the blogger and the content of the e-mail immediately gets posted to the online blog.Advantages of Setting up a Blog From a content provider perspective, it is much easier to post information using a simple form as compared to using a web authoring program which requires you to open the program, log into your website, get your file, edit, and save. In the case of Blogger.com, you can quite easily post information to your blog by e-mail or directly from Microsoft Word™ by using a free plugin (see http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html). Blogs also provide perks from the consumer perspective. For one, you can more easily have access to current and past information because all posts are archived and searchable. Depending on the specific blogging service you use, you can do a variety of things with each post. At blogger.com, each post has a link next to it that looks like a small envelope. Clicking on this link will allow anyone to easily forward the information to others via e-mail. Each post also has its own website address so you can refer others to the post and they won’t have to search for it among other posts. Another advantage of blogging is that, if you select the option, readers can post comments making the blog somewhat interactive.Real Simple Syndication (RSS)
One of the biggest advantages of using blogs from a consumer perspective is that you can have these posts automatically delivered to you without having to keep checking the website for updates! Parents, teachers, kids, and others can automatically receive your posts within seconds. Your blog can be one of many others of interest and so the consumer can quickly check several blogs all at once. Two basic steps are involved: First, your blogging service creates a blog or RSS "feed" which contains some basic information about your posts. The feed is updated every time you post information. You can indicate the availability of your RSS feed by promoting your RSS link which, on most sites, is indicated with a small orange icon with the acronym RSS. Second, the blog consumer uses a feed reader also known as aggregator. The reader subscribes to the blog by pointing the feed reader to the blog’s feed and clicking on "subscribe." RSS feeds are even more efficient than listservs because the information is instantly available to you once your RSS aggregator checks the feed as compared to waiting for an e-mail to arrive, if it ever does given the new attention on spam blocking. As the mainstream media attempts to realize the full potential of RSS, the news media in particular is utilizing RSS by bypassing traditional news sources. Consumers and journalists are now able to have news constantly fed to them instead of searching for it. School counselors can also enjoy such power as it pertains to their work. How do I get the Feeds? Of course, parents, kids, and stake holders can continue to use the traditional method of periodically checking your website for new information. But with a small investment of time to set it up once, automatically receiving RSS feeds can open a new world of instant news, not just in counseling but in a myriad of other areas as well. There are different ways to subscribe to a feed, you need only do one of the following, whichever is best for you: Use the latest web browser such as Internet Explorer 7 which comes with a RSS aggregator. You can download the latest version by going to You can also use free RSS aggregator software which can stay open in the background and collect your news for you. One such program is Feedreader ( http://www.feedreader.com/). Another is Pluck (http://www.pluck.com/products/getpluck.html). Also know that if you have a Google account, you can use the Google Reader at http://reader.google.com.Even more conveniently, you can use an e-mail program that comes with an RSS aggregator. This means that you can check e-mail and news feeds at the same time! For instance, Thunderbird is a free and popular e-mail program that will do the trick. You might also check to see if your current e-mail program has available an RSS feed reader add-on. For example, if you use Microsoft Outlook, check out Newsgator ( http://www.newsgator.com/home.aspx). If you have a Yahoo account, check out http://my.yahoo.com/s/about/rss/index.html. Although I don’t have a Gmail account from Google, I’m told that this service also includes a nice news feed collector or aggregator.To subscribe to a specific news feed, just plug in the address of the feed, an address that typically ends in XML (e.g., www.fla-schoolcounselor.org/news/rss.xml or http://www.fla-schoolcounselor.org/legislation/rss.xml) to subscribe. That’s it. If you are using a web browser with RSS capabilities (as mentioned in #1), you can just click on the little orange icon. For an online tutorial to help you get the hang of RSS, check out http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_subscribe_to_an_rss_feed.html.If I had to make a recommendation to you, I would go with a browser, either the new Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7 or Firefox, or use the free Thunderbird e-mail program. It seems to be the easiest and quickest way to subscribe to news feeds. As a side note, I’ve even found that using the IE7 feed aggregator makes it easy to check on the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) bulletin boards. Just log in, click on the orange RSS icons next to the topic, and then click on subscribe. The only catch is that you have to log into the bulletin board system first with your user id and password for the feeds to be updated. Other Examples of School Blogs Carpinteria Middle School Principal's Blog http://www.sbceo.org/~cms/boblog/blog.htmlHS Blog - HomeSchool Blog http://hsblog.org/index.phpThe DC Education Blog http://dcedublog.blogspot.com/Florida School Counselor Association Blog http://www.fla-schoolcounselor.org/news/Weblogs in Higher Education http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php?id=C0_84_13Education News http://www.topix.net/educationProfessors Who Blog http://rhetorica.net/professors_who_blog.htm
Blogging Help How to use Google Reader Video Tutorial http://andywibbels.com/flash/google_reader.htmBlogger.com Help http://help.blogger.com/Blogging Basics from Technorati http://www.technorati.com/help/blogging101.htmlBlog Basics http://www.blogbasics.com/Research Buzz Blogging Help http://www.semiologic.com/resources/help-with-feeds/Blogging and RSS — The "What's It?" and "How To" of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators by Will Richardson, Supervisor of Instructional Technology, Hunterdon Central Regional High School. http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan04/richardson.shtml |
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