Feed Me (an RSS feed!) (Module 8)

RSS feeds, although a fairly underused and older technology, can be a useful way to maintain connectivity with various news and information sites. In the past, I have used RSS feeds to display lists of videos from the MasterChef website within MyPLS, so students get an up-to-date feed of videos that might capture their interest during the term, or for displaying news articles from the Sydney Morning Herald site's Food site. In fact, if you have the Delicious toolbar installed, you can add an RSS feed to your Live Bookmarks too!

With some basic knowledge, it would be fairly easy for us to integrate the Podcast module into our teaching, and display the feed from YouTube or a similar video hosting site in a page on MyPLS (or another LMS system). This would help us keep track of the videos we were posting, and minimise the amount of work it takes to continuously update two pages; One page for hosting the video and one page to display it to students / provide them with a link. The RSS feed would automatically update the list each time you add a video to YouTube (for example).

The further benefit of RSS feeds is that they are generally pretty flexible, so from a developers perspective we can add style elements to them, making the feed more interesting and easier to read.

Another great (and fairly underused) resource!

Check out the feed for Sydney Morning Herald below!

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