Lesson 5: RSS - Rich Site Summary

Think (e-Portfolio)
1. Which sites do you visit regularly? Make a list (4~5 is fine). Before you began this course, what did you do (or still do) to keep yourself up to date on new content posted to your favourite sites?
I regularly visit google.com, yahoo.com, msn.com, rakuten.co.jp, and japantimes.co.jp. To keep myself up to date, I visit these pages often, and always give the whole page a careful look, and see if there are new contents.

Explore (e-Portfolio)
1. Websites that display a button similar to the ones here on the right have an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. Visit a few of the sites that you listed above (Think step). Look over each site carefully, can you find an RSS button? You might need to scroll down the page, and you will need to look carefully if it is a 'busy' page. Which of your favourite sites provide an RSS feed? Write RSS next to each of these sites in your list. Which ones don't?
Can you think why some sites do not?
google.com RSS yahoo.com RSS msn.com RSS amazon.co.jp RSS japantimes.co.jp RSS
I have discovered that all of my favorite pages provide the RSS button.
Explain (e-Portfolio)
Write a post reflecting on RSS with reference to the four SCICU Key Questions.
1. What are the main skills needed to use Google Reader?
2. What are the affordances of RSS (what does it make possible, what does it impede)?
3. How can Google Reader be used to network professionally and connect you (& other students) to learning resources?
4. What skills and understandings have you learned about RSS that may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?
1. The main skills needed to use the Google Reader is being able to find the RSS button, and being able to add on the favorite pages to it. In addition, we need to understand how the page works, and how RSS is useful to us.
2. By having RSS, we do not have to search by ourselves for updates, as it enables us to see at once, what has been added lately.
3. We can keep our favorite pages all in one place, so Google Reader could become one big database of our studies, with latest updates.
4. People would be able to get the updates, easily, therefore they would always have the latest information and are up to date with the contents.