Adding RSS to Your Course

I know you have been itching to learn how to add a newsfeed to your course and to finally understand what RSS stands for so you can impress all your friends. RSS is a geeky term standing for Really Simple Syndication (also referred to as Web feed, feed, or channel). What this means is that when you subscribe to a site on the Internet, the news is brought to you so that you spend less time looking for updated information in blogs, e-zines, news headlines, audio, or video. The short summary in the RSS includes publishing dates and a link to the source.

“Fantastic,” I hear you thinking! Before I take you through the steps on how to add it to your course, I need to give you a little more information.

Moodle enables you to bring feeds (information) to various activities in Moodle. You can use RSS with

• Forums
• Glossaries
• Databases
• The course front page (blocks)

For you to be able to use RSS, it needs to be enabled in the Administration block in the Server subsection. If you don't have administrative privileges, ask your system administrator to enable it. It will also have to be enabled in the Forum activity. When you're making this request, ask the administrator to enable administrative and teacher submitters in the Blocks section. If you need instructions on how to make these changes, see Chapter 13, which provides a brief rundown on many of the Moodle administrative tasks.

Including RSS on the course front page

The RSS feeds block allows you to bring feeds to a block on the course front page. The block will automatically update to bring in the latest feeds. You can add one or more RSS feeds to your course front page. You create a list of the Web sites and then you can select from the list how many you want to arrive to your activity or course front page block at any one time. Site and course front pages are common places for an RSS feed block(s).

To set up an RSS feed block, follow these steps:

1. Click the Turn Editing On button in the top-right corner of your course front page.
2. Find the Blocks block on the front page (you may have to scroll down to find it) and select Remote RSS Feed from the drop-down list.

   The Remote News Feed block appears, as shown in Figure 12-15.

3. Click the edit icon on the Remote News Feed block.

   Moodle takes you to the default page, Configuring a Remote RSS Feeds Block, shown in Figure 12-16.

4. Set the following options to configure the block feeds:
   • • Display each link's description? Select Yes or No from the drop-down list. If you select Yes, the block shows the description of each article as it appears on the Web; select No, and the block displays only the title. Both are generated by the feed — you have no work here.

     Figure 12-15: The course front page showing the RSS block.

     

     Figure 12-16: The Configuring a Remote RSS Feeds Block page.

     

   • • Max Number Entries to Show per Block: The default is 5. Moodle displays the most recent first.
   • • Choose the Feeds . . .: After you select a number of feeds, you see a check box next to them and you can select each feed by selecting the check box. You can break up the feed block by having more than one.
   • • Title: Make sure you add a title, or Moodle takes the title from the newsfeeds, which can be messy if you have more than one feed.
   • • Display a Link? If you select Yes from the drop-down list, Moodle provides you with a link to the full article and the original site from where it was first published. This link is useful if your learners will want to reference the information in their projects, essays, and so on.
   • • Show Channel Image? Newsfeeds have images and logos and display them with the feed unless you leave the default as No.

     Allowing for images and logos can eat up your Moodle space, which is particularly problematic if you're on a restricted space budget. I recommend leaving the default No if you need impressive negotiating skills to get more space for your course.

5. Click the Save Changes button.

   Moodle returns you to the course front page. You see the title of your newsfeed in the block.

6. From the RSS block, click the Add/Edit link located right under the editing icons.

   Moodle takes you to the Configuring a Remote RSS Feeds Block page again, this time with the Manage All My Feeds tab selected, as shown in Figure 12-17.

   Figure 12-17: The Configuring a Remote RSS Feeds Block page.

   

   Unless you get the privilege to add the feeds, which I strongly recommend, only the administrator has this privilege but can be easily changed to Administrator and Teacher. Bring your system administrator a soda and chocolate ask for this privilege.

7. Fill in the following information about the feed you want to add:
   • • Add a News Feed URL: Copy and paste (or type) the URL address of the RSS feed in the field provided. Moodle generates the RSS page address.
   • • Custom Title: In the field provided, add your title. Moodle tells you that if you leave it blank it will use the one supplied by the feed, which means the generating site.
   • • Shared Feed: Select this check box if you want to make the feed available to all the courses in the Moodle site. This option can be useful, for instance, for an announcements feed in college publications.

     Remember that even if you select this option, courses that don't have the RSS block enabled will not display the RSS block. Don't rely on sharing the RSS feed block as a main means of communicating important news.

   • • Validate Feed: Before clicking the Add button, Moodle provides a validation feed tool to confirm the feed URL is accurate. Click the Validate Feed link. Wait a few seconds, and Moodle returns a validation page congratulating you, as shown in Figure 12-18.

   Figure 12-18: The output of Moodle's feed validator.

   

8. Click the Add button to submit the feed.

   Moodle confirms the addition and returns you to the Manage All My Feeds tab, where you can edit it and add another feed. (See Figure 12-19.)

   Note that it will take a little time before the server refreshes, and you will see the new news feed in your newly created Remote News Feeds block.

Figure 12-19: The Configuring a Remote RSS Feeds Block page with a new feed added.

Add RSS to forums

If you set up a forum discussion around a specific learning goal topic, a debate, or a project, you and your learners may find it very useful to enable newsfeeds to be brought to the forum. Forum newsfeeds can generate further discussions and debates. Even though RSS is enabled, it also has to be enabled in the Site Administration block, located in the Modules subsection in Activities under Forum. When you enable RSS, the Forum Editing page includes an RSS section with two extra settings. If you already have RSS enabled for your activities, you don't have to worry about pleading with your system administrator.

To set up RSS in your forum, follow these steps:

1. Add (or select update) a forum in the section where you want the forum to appear. If you already have a forum set up, click the Forums link in the Activities block, select the particular forum, and click the Update This Forum button located in the top-right corner.

   If this is a new forum discussion, complete all the fields to set up the forum. See Chapter 8 for details on how to set up a forum.

2. In the RSS section, specify these two settings (see Figure 12-20):
   • • RSS Feed for This Activity: From the drop-down list, select Posts if you want the feed to send any news post to subscribers. Select Discussion if you want the fee to send new discussions to subscribers. Leaving the default None disables the RSS.
   • • Number of RSS Recent Articles: From the drop-down list, select the number you would like. Five is a good, manageable choice. Moodle is quite generous, enabling you to set up to 50 newsfeeds. This would be an extraordinary number to allow and would quickly use up your allocated space if the topic could generate this much info. Your system administrator may have tweaked this option so that you only have choices up to 5.

   Figure 12-20: The Forums set-up page showing RSS options.

   

3. Click the Save and Return to Course button.

   Moodle returns to your course front page.

Click the new or updated forum, and Moodle takes you to it. Notice the RSS icon shown in Figure 12-21. Whenever you see this icon, a newsfeed is enabled for the activity.

Figure 12-21: A forum discussion with RSS enabled.