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The OSAPAC website contains huge amounts of valuable information that's of great interest to Ontario educators. For the most part, software titles licensed by the Ministry of Education form the core of software that's available for Ontario student and teachers. To assist people who wish this information, many places (including above) have a link to the website. So, once you get there, where do you go and what do you do to find things? The first page is known as the "Bulletin Board" and many of the new items, new software titles that are licensed, recent OSAPAC events, etc. are highlighted on this page. But, if you're there for the Teacher Survey, the Curriculum Expectation / Software corelation database, or the Learning Materials Repository, you're on your own to find them. Hopefully the webmaster (a really nice guy) has made navigation to the site intuitive enough to find what you're in search of. However, you still have to visit the site at http://www.osapac.org to get that information. One of the things that Internet search engines do is provide the facility to have reverse link lookup. In other words, you can go to a site like Yahoo and ask it to tell you how many pages does it recognize that link to another. I did a check and Yahoo Canada indicates that there are 169 pages that it knows about that link to the OSAPAC website. So, from 169 different sites, people are dropped off at the front door and left to their own devices to find what they want. Wouldn't it be nice if you could have a quick and easy directory to what's new and important at the site? And, wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to visit the website explicitly to get it? You can now. OSAPAC is now supporting an RSS feed of information to the site. As new items are added to the site, or portions of the site are determined to be of high interest, they are added to the RSS feed. All that you have to do is tap into the feed. From your desktop or favourite webpage, you'll see what's new without having to visit the site! What's RSS?
There are a number of different takes on this. The one that I like
is "Really Simply Syndication". The bottom line is that it's
a simple XML that you point an interpreter to, and then sit back and
check out
what's new. A really excellent discussion about RSS appears at: http://idea.zanestate.edu/rss/.
They call it the Gateway Technology. Sites that provide RSS feeds often
identify themselves with this graphic. You can access RSS feeds in a few ways. I use Mozilla Firebird as my primary web browser and I have installed a plug-in called Sage into my browser. I tell Sage which RSS feeds that I want to read, ask it to refresh them, and read the feeds right inside the browser. Sage isn't the only software title that you can use. RSS Bandit is a great free RSS reader. There are lots more. Do an Internet web search for RSS Reader and you'll be humbled with how many people have developed these tools. Suppose that you want to put the RSS feed on your website like it is in the GEC Computers in the Classroom page. Just link to an interpreter and put the text in your page. I use the Maricopa feed to JS utility. It does the trick and puts the feed where it's supposed to be. What I like is that it is customizable so that you can incorporate the same theme fonts, colours, and CSS that you would for your regular page. So, don't just send visitors to your website off on a trip to the front door of the OSAPAC site. Put the RSS feed right on your website. They can get the latest and never have to leave to get it.
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