Finally, the Chalkface Blog has an RSS feed. For good measure, we’ve added RSS feeds to each news category (Teachers, Students, Default) and all 31 product category listings on the site.

What’s RSS?

Really Simple Syndication is a system that makes all kinds of timed information (news feeds, blogs, student assignments….) much more accessible than they are through the web alone. Here’s how it works.

You get hold of a piece of software called an RSS aggregator. Good free ones are NetNewsWire (Mac) or FeedReader (PC). You tell it which sites you want to watch (provided they have RSS feeds), then every few minutes it goes and grabs headlines or whole articles from those sites. You can skim them in your own time, clicking through to the original website if the article seems interesting enough.

Mine’s become my morning newspaper, containing news from the sources I trust, together with third-party compilations of news in topics of interest to me. Here are just a few of my regulars – once you’ve got your RSS aggregator installed, feel free to copy these links:

• BBC education news
• Samuel Pepys’ Diary (400 years out of date!)
• EdTech
• Burnt Toast
• Chalkface Blog (always check my own to make sure it’s working)