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| Friday, 22 July 2005: 10:00 AM-10:45 AM | |||
| Pacific I (San Francisco Marriott) | |||
| M-5: Livening your WebCT Course with RSS | |||
| Detailed Description: | Incorporating up-to-date news and resources in course sites has traditionally been a time intensive task. What if you could streamline this process so that it happened automatically? This session will outline straightforward ways to incorporate live news, Weblogs, wikis, and other content streams into your online course environment using a technology called RSS (Rich Site Summary). We will also explore how readily accessible social software tools can be used to complement your WebCT course environment. | ||
| Presentation Format: | Showcase | ||
| Topic: | Enabling learning: Effective instructional practices and flexible design models | ||
| Target Audience: | Course Designers, E-learning Managers, Faculty and Other Instructors | ||
| Appropriate Audience Level: | Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users | ||
| Abstract Text: | RSS (which stands for Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending who you ask) is a simple application of XML that you don't need to be a code geek to love. It allows educators to track and process powerful information flows, to easily display dynamically updated external content inside WebCT, and to “loosely join” the rapidly growing universe of social software applications. The most common use of RSS by individuals is via the newsreader, which allows anyone to receive up-to-the minute alerts from news publications, weblogs, learning resource collections, and any other information source that provides an RSS feed. The presentation will review the basics of using a newsreader to stay informed on topics of interest, with special focus on educational feeds. The presentation will focus on how to set up news or resource lists in your WebCT course that are automatically updated when new items are published. Both are readily accomplished within headers and footers of organizer pages, or within content module pages. One the feeds are set up, RSS does the rest. Note: technical skills including copying and pasting are required to complete this process. Finally, discussion will consider how RSS can allow instructors to extend their WebCT course environment to encompass social software tools including weblogs, wikis, social bookmarking tools such Furl and del.icio.us, and photo sharing services such as Flickr. Recommendations of tools and resources as well as examples of exemplary RSS use by educators will be provided. | ||
| Session Leader: | Michelle N. Lamberson University of British Columbia | ||
| Co-Presenter: | Brian Lamb University of British Columbia | ||
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