Activity 7: aggregator

What for?
Syndication (see RSS in Plain English) has been and still is a crucial operation in the development of Web 2.0 and this has already been mentioned in the recommended readings. Syndication is based on two concepts: on the one hand, the part that creates the feeds, and on the other, the aggregator programme that is capable of reading the feeds. 

What needs to be done?
In this activity, the Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/) service will be used as an aggregator service, which serves to manage the syndication channel subscriptions
Key elements of the Reader aggregator that the student must know and use are: 

• Add subscription
• Administer the subscriptions

iGoogle (http://www.google.com/ig) is a start page which can also act as an aggregator, as it is also capable of seeing the subscriptions that come from a syndication channel. But, apart from this, there is much more to a start page. 

Key concepts that the student must know with respect to the start pages:

• Distribution of information based on tabs
• Add a new tab
• Share a tab
• Add a new object (gadget according to iGoogle):
• • Subscribe to your blog and see the novelties
  • Subscribe to your group?s wiki and see the novelties
  • Insert other calendars
  • See the messages from several email accounts 
  • A list of bookmarks or favourites

What must be handed in and how?
The student must respond to Activity 7 by sharing a tab from his/her iGoogle start page with teacher xxxxxx (email: xxxxxxxxx@ccccc). In order to be able to distinguish each student?s assignments it is important that the tab to be shared should be identificative. To this end, the tab?s name will be that of the student?s GMail email. See the picture illustrating the example assuming that the tab to be shared corresponds to Jon Urizar:

When proposing this activity within the framework of everyday university teaching with a virtual classroom: in order that there may exist a record of the response made in the Moodle virtual classroom (or similar), it is necessary to respond to Activity 7 writing a text in the corresponding edition box (for example: indicating the day the iGoogle was shared with the teacher).

Nature of the tasks proposed
Group and individual. Compulsory
Estimated maximum time for their completion (including reading, group coordination, drawing up documents, etc.): 15 hours

[ back]