Connecting with Others in your Student Blog!

Literacy – 6th grade

Important parts of the blogging process include:

• Reading other people’s blog posts

• Interacting and commenting on other people’s blog posts to challenge each others thoughts and views

• Writing posts in response to other bloggers’ posts

Making Connections!

• Simply put — Blogging is about connecting with others!

In this activity you will:

• Be introduced to RSS• Learn how to set up Google Reader• Set up Google Reader and subscribe to blogs• Create and upload your comment avatar• Visit other people’s posts that interest you and leave a

comment• Visit the Discussion Question for activity four to share

more about how you use or will use RSS feeds and freed readers

• Complete the extension activity (if you have time).

Step 1: Introduction to RSS

• RSS is an acronym which stands for Really Simple Syndication.

• In simple terms, RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the website to check for new updates.

• How it works is you subscribe to your favorite website using the RSS feed in a RSS feed reader such as Google Reader. Whenever new information is added to the website it is automatically sent to your RSS feed reader where you can read it at your convenience.

• For example, whenever your favorite blogger publishes a new post it is automatically sent to your Feed reader.

• Sites with RSS feeds are normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon.

RSS in Plain English

Sites with RSS feeds are normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon.

For more information, watch RSS in Plain English

Please note :• Blogs on all standard blogging platforms automatically

include RSS feeds and don’t necessarily use words or an icon to indicate the presence of the RSS feed.

• For all Edublogs, the rss feed is found by going to yourblog.edublogs.org/feed. However, RSS feed Readers like Google Reader automatically detect your RSS feed from your blog URL so there is no need to know the feed URL.

• RSS lets you do lots of cool stuff including adding latest updates from your favorite blog(s) or news website(s) to your own site using RSS widgets like FeedWind’s RSS widget

Step 2: How to set up and use Google Reader•A key aspect to managing reading other people’s blogs, being able to quickly respond to their posts and connect with them is to use a RSS feed reader.•The most commonly used RSS Feed Reader is Google Reader.

Here’s how you set up Google Reader:1. Create a Gmail account (if you don’t have one)2. Go to Google Reader and sign in with your Google Account3. Add the blogs you want to subscribe to one at a time, to your Google Reader account by:•Clicking on Add A Subscription•Entering their blog URL•Now click Add

Here’s how to read posts inside Google ReaderLatest posts from the blogs you subscribe to will automatically be added to your Google Reader when they’re published and you read them as follows:1. Log into your Google Reader account2. Click on all items

Please Note: Make sure it is set to Show: Expanded so you see the full post.

3. The number of unread posts is shown in bold next… All Items.

4. Now just scroll down through the posts in All items to read their posts.5. As you scroll the posts will automatically be marked as read and the number of unread posts listed next to All Items will decrease.

6.  To visit a post to add a comment just click on the post’s title.

Step 3: Set up Google Reader and subscribe to blogsNow you have learnt about RSS and Google Reader it is time to set up your own Google Reader account.

Once you have set it up we want you to subscribe to the following blogs:We’ve made it easy with the first few by giving you the blog URL you need to add to Google Reader)1. Teacher Challenge Blog -

http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/2. The Teacher Challenge Conversation blog –

http://conversations.edublogs.org/3. The Edublogger – http://theedublogger.com/4. Choose five blogs from the The Teacher Challenge

mentors page that you would like to subscribe to5. Choose five blogs from any category of the

Edublog Awards 2010

And if you would like to make it easy to monitor the conversations in comments on the Teacher Challenge Blogs then add these following two feeds:

•Teacher Challenge Blog comments feed- http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/comments/feed/

•The Teacher Challenge Conversation blog comments feed – http://conversations.edublogs.org/comments/feed/

So your subscriptions in Google Reader should look a bit like this:

ALL DONE!

You are free to connect…