If Web 1.0 were about interconnection and linking, Web 2.0 would be about RSS (really sweet syndication;-) and feeding. Sue Waters, who writes the Edublogger, introduces RSS here (Are you making your life easier…, 2008.03.28). Please check out that post, and the YouTube video in it. Then try it out yourself!
You’ll need to go to your Edublog dashboard (Site Admin), then click on the Presentation tab, and open the Widgets control panel. You can prepare for up to nine in the RSS Feed Widgets control panel (below the drag and drop layout display). You don’t have to do so immediately, but if you learn to love RSS feeds, you may need to get more in the future. The default is one RSS feed; I chose to display three for starters.
The next step is to drag and drop an RSS widget (RSS 1) from the menu of choices into one of your sidebars. As I noted in a previous post (Presentation Tips 001), I left space in the right sidebar for new widgets (RSS 1, pictured below).
For this example, I’ve chosen the Edits and Discussions feed from the EnglishVII-VIII wiki (space-wide notification):
On an actual web site, when you click on an orange RSS button like the one in the picture, you’ll go a page with a special URL that you’ll need to copy, for example:
Then, if you click on the RSS widget editing button in your Edublog Widgets control panel, you’ll see fields for the RSS feed URL (the special kind of page address), and a title for the widget you’re making, along with a choice of how many recent items to list in the sidebar widget display.
You need to paste the RSS feed URL that you copied into the first field (to make sure it’s accurate and complete), and you should give the feed a short, descriptive title. Once you close the RSS widget editor (X), AND Save Changes that you’ve made in the Widgets control panel, snippets of live content from the original web site will show up in your blog sidebar (View site >>). If it appears too long, you can edit the widget again to reduce the number of items to display.
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Tags: feeds, RSS, tutorials, URLs, Web 2.0, widgets
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May 26th, 2008 at 14:29 pm
Over the weekend, Edublogs underwent a major make-over influencing many appearances if not aspects of site administration (Site admin), from the Dashboard on down. That is, since I posted about the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, and illustrated the transition with screenshots showing how to add RSS feeds to your sidebars. Grrr… eat! Although I like most of the innovations Edublogs have made, I’m afraid that screenshots in previous tutorials are now largely obsolete.
For example, edit buttons on widgets in control panels now have the text label, “Edit,” instead of graphic representations (a blue bar and black lines). You can now find widgets under the Design tab, and the layout of the control panels have changed, too. Although you can still grab, drag, and drop widgets to rearrange them; when you’re done saving your changes, instead of “View site >>” links, you should click through the “Visit Site” link to see whether everything you’ve changed in your sidebars looks the way you want it.
May 26th, 2008 at 15:03 pm
For an illustrated overview of changes Edublogs have made, see Sue Waters’ Quick Tour of the All New Edublogs Features (2008.05.24).