The Wonderment of RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds:

One of our goals here are South Hamilton is to increase our communication avenues with parents. Our first line of communication is this very newsletter. Currently we have two mailing lists, one for the daily announcements and one for schedule changes due to weather (further information can be found about the mailing lists in this months newsletter). South Hamilton also has a well-used and informative school webpage with teacher emails and contact information. The webpage even has a section devoted to special announcements on the main page with changes in upcoming events, on important messages for parents and the community. Parents/guardians also can access grades, attendance, and lunch balances through the SHCSD webpage. One new communication tool that we added just this year was the incorporation of teacher weblogs. These teacher created pages gives anyone wanting to know access to what is being taught in the classrooms, with assignments and upcoming test dates. We have now added the ability for you to have this information delivered directly to your home computer through the use of RSS Feeds.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and can be found all over the internet. The purpose of these feeds is to have information sent directly to your computer without having to go to the actual website. For example; Mrs. Pulis updates her weblog and as soon as the new information is posted the changes will be automatically sent to your RSS reader on your home computer. The best part about RSS is that there are many FREE readers available on the internet.

Some of the free readers are FeedReader3, AmphetaDesk, NetNewsWire (not free but very good), and Google,has a built in RSS Feed aggregator. Once you have a favorite installed you can add the RSS feed from ANY site that has RSS. To determine what sites have RSS look for this icon.

By clicking the RSS button it gives you the URL to put into your reader. There are many, many other readers and things you can do with RSS feeds, but for our purposes this is it. If you have any questions please email Mr. Hehr at Karl_Hehr@s-hamilton.k12.ia.us or visit the school’s website for more information.