Bloglines
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[edit] Overview
Bloglinesis an RSS aggregator that is a web based service. So what does an RSS aggregator do? Well think of it as a personalized newspaper or TV station. Instead of having to wade through all the news all the time you can begin to filter the news for only things that interest you. The service allows you to log into your bloglines account from anywhere in the world. The benefit of this service is that you don't have to be at a certain computer to view your account. There are other aggregators some are separate programs and other are built into web browsers such as Firefox and Safari.
[edit] Creating an Account
To set up an account in Bloglines here is what you will want to do:
Open your favorite Internet browser and enter the URL, http://www.bloglines.com. This will bring you to the Bloglines main page. On the right hand side of the screen you will see a link that says click here to register. This will bring you to a standard web form that asks for your email address, a password, and the time zone you are in. Once you click the register button you will have to wait for an email to confirm your account. Once you follow the direction in the email you are ready to start adding your RSS feeds.
[edit] Finding Feeds
You can use Bloglines to find blogs or you can use one of the two other search engines to help you find blogs. One is called Technorati and the other is Google's Blog Search
If you are interested in something such as robotics or Star Wars you can probably find a variety of Blogs about these topics. So think of something you would like to read about and enter a search term into one of the following Blog search engines.
Of course the blogs you may find on these topics might agree with your views or interests. What about something that is a bit more news worthy? Well you can also subscribe to prominent news sources such as the New York Times or the BBC. There are other sites out there that allow you to see changes as they happen. Basically any web site that has a tag similar to this 
or says something about RSS feeds being available on the page can be added to a blog aggregator. Once you have found a blog that interests you you need to add the RSS link to your bloglines account.
[edit] Technorati
Blog searches are different than your regular Google or Yahoo search. Blog searches are looking for recent changes on the web as they relate to blogs, where typical searches look for more static content. This is not to say that blogs won't end up in your searches, but rather that a blog search will sort your hits by time stamps not relevancy.
If you go to http://www.technorati.com you can start to search for keywords of interest.
By entering keywords in the search box you can search in three different areas. The first is blog posts. This will search all of the blogs that have the term that you are looking for. Technorati displays a short synopsis about the blog itself, when the post was made, and a link to the blog.
You also have the option to subscribe to the search as you did in bloglines. This way you can keep up on the conversation that is taking place.
[edit] Google Blog Search
Just like Technorati Google also searches the changing world of blogs. By going to http://blogsearch.google.com/ you can enter your search terms and see if there is anything of interest to you. Google allows you to also sort through and see what has been posted in different time frames. You can also subscribe to your search by copying on either the RSS or Atom link and placing it into your Bloglines account.
[edit] Adding Feeds
To add a feed to Bloglines is easy. First you will want to login to your account. After you are logged in on the left hand side of your screen you will see a menu that has different tabs.
You will want to make sure the tab that says My Feeds is selected. You can add a feed by clicking the Add Feed link. This will change the right hand side of you screen to look similar to this
Now you have to enter the web address of the blog that you want to subscribe to. The easiest way to do this is to copy the web address from the address bar of Internet Explorer and paste the web address into the bloglines form. For example if I entered the BBC's home page address and clicked Subscribe I would then see the different feeds that were available off that page.
By checking the subscribe box and clicking the subscribe button at the bottom of the page you will be subscribing to the blog.
This is the simplest way to add a blog to feed list. Notice that you can preview the feed prior to actual subscribing to it. So if this is the blog that you want to subscribe to simply submit your request by clicking the subscribe button. You can take the time to organize your feeds if you would like using the folder pull down menu to create folders for you feeds. You can also add your own notes prior to hitting the subscribe button. 
When you are ready to subscribe hit the subscribe button. Don't be worried about making a mistake with this service if you make a mistake you can delete the mistake. Now you should see a feed on the left hand side of your screen that has the name of the blog you just subscribed to.
If you feel comfortable and want to make this process even easier you can do so by installing a button in your web browser so that you can easily subscribe to pages.
[edit] Classroom Use
So how and why might you use this in your classroom? Depending on the amount of ways you use the web will depend on how useful this is for your classroom. Take for example if you are a Social Studies teacher and want to make sure students are up on current events. One way you might use Bloglines is to subscribe to the headlines from the New York Times or International News. This way you have the newest information from around the world at your finger tips.
Perhaps you are a science teacher and want to have students reading college level articles. You could subscribe to an RSS feed from something like Nature or The Journal for American Medicine. Then use the feeds to help students find articles that interest them, or have the students subscribe themselves. Then students could go down to the library and check out the articles from the databases like Ebsco.
Another great use of this technology is your own staff development. Perhaps there is an Journal that you wish you received, or that you would like to stay up to date on. You may want to check out there web site and see if they have an RSS feed. This way you can stay up on the latest research.
Another possibility for using RSS is the ability to keep up to date on web searches on a specific topic. Perhaps you have students that are doing research on a specific topic and they would like to be able to look at the opinions of others or information from different sources. Bloglines lets you actually keep an RSS feed of a search term in one of two specific areas. When you click on the search tab at the top of the page you will be given the opportunity to search four different areas from the drop down menu.
The two areas that allow you to create a feed are the area for Search for Citations and Search for Posts. So if you enter a search term and select either to search fr citations or posts you will see on the right hand side of the page two links.
If you click on the one labeled Bloglines you will be able to add this search term to your blog subscriptions and keep up to date on all of the posts or citations that are done. Now you will be up to date on all of the things that are posted using your search term.
[edit] Additional Resources
If you would like to do some learning on your own you may want to check out Will Richardson's resources regarding RSS
