[TIPS] Part Iv - Weaning off the listserv (Tabbloid)

How did you do? Were you able to set up an account? Were you then able to subscribe to my blog? If not, you know how to get in touch with me. I’ll help however I can. I want you to be successful.

If you WERE successful in subscribing to my blog then you’re on your way to the best way to gather information that you’ve ever seen. You just have to kep your eye open for RSS feeds. For example, let’s say that you’re a science teacher and you’d like to gather feeds from a newspaper’s science column. Let’s choose usatoday.com. Go there now (http://usatoday.com) and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Just up from the bottom a bit, and over on the left side, is a list of items that include RSS. Click that orange icon. You’ll then be taken to a page that lists all the feeds for all the columns. Do you know what to do from here?

Here’s one reason why I LOVE the Firefox browser. I’ve already gone into the Preferences (options) and in the Applications tab I’ve set up my aggregator as the default. The picture (You may have to go to my blog to see it) shows the details. It’s under Web Feed in the list. Just set your chosen aggregator as the default. Then, all I do to subscribe is click the RSS icon and it takes me right to the aggregator and it’s ready for me to finish the subscription process. Very easy. LOVE this browser!

Don’t want usatoday, how about cnn.com. See if you can find the link to the cnn feeds. Or the msnbc feeds, or the fox news feeds. With firefox you can tell if there’s a feed on the page very easily as the rss icon appears in the right corner of the address field.

TRY THIS! Make it work for you! You will NOT regret the time you spend learning it. I promise!

Now, let me tell you today about a tool that might just be the way that you choose to get the tips. It’s called tabbloid.com. It’s pretty neat. No account necessary. Just go there, and pate in the url’s of the sites that have the feeds you want. In the case of cnn and usatoday, etc you will have to be specific or you may get ALL the columns. But, what this site does is it gathers the new feeds and puts it into a newsletter format in a pdf document and emails it to you daily – or twice daily, or weekly, or whatever you choose. This could be a fun way for social studies teachers to collect feeds, too. Then print them and display them. But, you could choose to get my blog feed in tabbloid style instead of in the aggregator. Your choice.

I do hope that you’ve been successful with this. If not, let me know (comments) and when I get a chance I’ll make a little movie of my own to help you.