Math Error

I know many of you who read this blog regularly also must read other blogs regularly.  How about sites like FaceBook and MySpace?  Or CNN or ESPN?  It can be very time consuming to go to all of these sites individually, especially if you are like me and have a rather slow Internet connection.  There a way to make your online life easier.  The answer is RSS feeds. 

Fellow blogger, Sue Waters, has some very excellent posts on the matter of RSS and RSS readers. 

On her blog, she says:

Spend any time on the Internet, and you will see the word RSS or the orange icon normally used to indicate a site has RSS feed. RSS is an acronym which stands for Really Simple Syndication.

In simple terms RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the site.      

Here are the steps you would need to follow in order to start taking advantage of RSS. 

1. Chose a reader.  I use Google Reader and have used Bloglinesin the past.  Use of both of these would require a valid email address.  Google Reader is accessable here at school but you will have to validate your email address at home.  I think Bloglines is blocked here at school.  The reader does the work for you.  When you log on, it searches the feeds you have told it to (we will discuss this in step 2, later on) and brings the content to you.  This way, you do not have to waste valuable time going to each individual site.  Most readers are set up like an email in-box.  It lists the new content you have not read yet.  When you are done with it…simply mark it as ”read” like you would with your email.  With Google Reader, there is no need to delete items, it stores them for you in case you want to see them again later. 
2. Adding feeds.  Most pages that have feeds have an orange symbol that looks like the one pictured below.  Clicking on this image will allow you to “subscribe” to the feed in your RSS reader. 
3. Some sites do not advertise that they publish an RSS feed but they do.  Sometimes you can copy and paste the url (web address) into your feed reader and find out if they do!

I have added RSS to my site this week, so maybe this will be a helpful way for you to keep up with your favorite math teacher (and other things) online!  Have fun and safe surfing!