Syndiating Learning Objects with RSS and Trackback

A presentation from the 2003 MERLOT International Conference.

From the abstract:

This presentation will demonstrate how to create RSS views into the collections from different organizations. These views may be aggregated into user defined collections via desktop applications such as Amphetadesk and NetNewsWire, and even allow collections defined by academic subject.

Finally, blogs connected to the RSS feeds might provide a component of object contextuality that is beyond the meta-data. Faculty content developers find objects via RSS feeds coming into their blog site, and use "auto-discovery" tools to provide commentary on how the object might be or is used in an instructional context. "TrackBack" allows objects to record which external sites have blogged on these objects

Each presenter will describe how little effort it took to generate the RSS feeds into existing repositories and demonstrate ease of use of readily available tools for expanding the network of "blogged" objects.