Google Reader (News readers and aggregators)

News readers or aggregators are special software which enable people subscribe different sites and read their content  from the same Internet place or tool. There are some web-based Newsreaders.

Google Reader is one of them but there are some other  services which offer newreaders on line:  My Yahoo, Bloglines, My RSS reader, etc. (to see a list of them visit web- based news readers at the Open directory Project)

Task 1:

If you want to know how a newsreader works see the following video by Commoncraft.

 

Task 2:

If you want to learn how to use Google Reader, do the following practice based on another video written by Commoncraft and produced by Google. Watch the video and, while you see it, try to get the answers for the following questions: 

• In which way is Google Reader useful for a person who visits the Internet very often?
• What do feeds enable?
• How can you add the content generated in other sites into your Google Reader?

 

Check your answers:

You can read the script for this video to check your answers:

Things move fast on the web, and it’s hard to keep up with your favourite sites by visiting them separately.

 Thankfully Goggle Reader can help. Google Reader lets you subscribe to websites, so new content comes to you when it’s posted.

 

Here it how it works:

 ·                     Strive for feeds on your favourite sites. Feeds enable new content from these sites to appear in Reader.

·                     To add a new site click add subscription, search for site, and subscribe directly from reader. You can also click the orange feed buttoms or copy the web address into the subscriptions field.

 Once subscriptions are in place, new items will start to appear in Google Reader automatically.

 When they do, Reader tells you how many items are new.

 Clicking “share” makes it easy for your friends to see what you find interesting, and you can even add notes to these items.

 Also, you can see what items your friends share with you right from here.

Google Reader makes new content from your web site efficient to read and easy to share.

Task:

Now, open your Google reader account and insert there the blogs from the other people in the course.