Using RSS Feeds (Blogs, Podcasts)
Everybody is doing it. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It allows anyone to publish and easily update their own journals, newsletters, magazines in forms such as blogs, podcasts, and newsfeeds. For example, you can create a blog using free applications such as Blogger ( http://www.blogger.com/ ). Once you publish the blog, you can allow your readers to post comments. Often a community of interactive readership develops as a result.
Blogs are great for class projects. Many teachers now incorporate blogs into the class projects. For instance, blogs are ideally suited to journaling assignments. For more ideas on using blogs in the classroom, you can visit any number of informative, forward thinking educational blog sites.
How do RSS feeds fit into Ecto? Let's say you are a teacher and you want to have your students create blogs as a way of journaling their thoughts on class readings. You can create an Ecto learning page for yourself or for the class which compiles the RSS feeds for all of the students. This allows you to easily review and evaluate the blogs from one location. If you choose to make the page visible to the class, it becomes a homebase where they can easily survey the blogs of their classmates and click through to read and make comments.