Teachers save time & energy by using a blog page & rss feed!

School districts now require teachers to not only be teachers but also to be web designers.  Every teacher must have a presence on the internet.  Some teachers have risen to the occasion and have made some really beautiful, informative sites while others struggle at it, not understanding which fonts are the easiest to read, which colors lend themselves to visual appeal or how keeping the layout clean and simple improves the readers chances of finding the information that they are looking for.

The biggest decision that a teacher has to make when it comes to their web presence is what kind do they want to have.  There are 2 very basic forms of websites.  The first being the more common standard web page where information is very rarely changed.  The second choice is a blog where information is changed frequently.  Or is the perfect solution a combination of both types?

Teachers today who have chosen only the standard webpage have to spend time reworking entire pages when they would like to add more information but the absolute worst part is that they are doing the work but do not know if students or parents are actually using the website.  Blog pages are very simple to update with the most recent information always at the top similar to social media but again you have the same problem with not knowing if your audience is actually taking the time to go look at the information that they have posted.

This district as well as many many other districts that are beginning the process of moving into the digital world are running into a common problem.  The problem is that once students move up into middle or high school and have 5 or more classes plus extracurricular activities the amount of places that they are required to go look for information can become overwhelming.

What if there was a way that teachers could continue to use the website creation platforms that are the most comfortable and functional for them while at the same time allowing students to view all of their teachers published communication in one place.

For those who don’t know an RSS Feed or Real Simple Syndication is a way to publish frequently updated information: blog entries, news headlines, audio, video. An RSS document (called "feed", "web feed",[3] or "channel") includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author's name.

The majority of teachers in this district are using Wix or Weebly to create their websites.  Wix does not inherently come with an RSS feed but the feed can be added to a blog page in about 5 clicks.  Weebly blog pages do come with an RSS feed built in and if one website has multiple blog pages each page will have it’s own RSS feed.  Other sites that teachers are using like Wiki and Google sites  and Google Drive can also incorporate an RSS feed.

The biggest benefit to adding an RSS feed to a website is that the information now has a way to be pushed to the desired audience rather than hoping that the audience will take the time to go find the information.

You might be asking why you would want to do that.  Well, here is an example.

A student can go to all of their teachers’ websites and copy the URLs for the RSS Feeds.  They can then take those URLs and paste them into an RSS Feed reader like Feedly so that they have one place where they can see all of the updated information for each class.  They will no longer have to go to multiple sites each night in hunt of the most relevant information that the teacher has posted.  They can also use this as their own personal learning network by adding Rss feeds from other blogs that are posting things that they might be interested in.

Dashboarding apps:

Feedly

greader

Netvibes

If you have any questions about incorporating an RSS feed into your existing website please leave a comment or email me and I will get back to you ASAP!