New Message: Using Manila RSS In a College Classroom

[webmaster at userland.com]

A new message was posted:

Address: http://manila.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$439

By: ken tompkins (ken at loki.stockton.edu)

I held a Manila workshop today for faculty and using RSS in their classrooms was a lively topic. They foresaw a problem, however, that -- under the present functionality -- will create problems.

Imagine 5 classes of 30 students each and imagine that each of the five faculty wanted to aggregate his students' pages. Without aggregation the faculty would have to visit each site to see, for example, if an assignment had been posted. Aggregating all 30 students in a class permits the teacher to visit one page where changes on all 30 will be evident.

There is, however, a problem. With 150 separate RSS feeds on the master list, it is going to be difficult if not impossible for each teacher to select out his particular students. This could, of course, grow to lists of hundreds of students having to be added to the list.

Forget for the moment the fact that as the administrator of our server, I will have to add all of these students to the master list. Copying and pasting help but it is still a somewhat daunting task. Making each faculty an administrator is troublesome for security reasons.

So, here is my first question: is there any way, at present or would this be an appropriate feature to add, to "group" the student feeds in one place in the master list?

It would be ideal if a "folder" could be created named Smith's Class and inside the folder all of Smith's students' feed could be listed. If that can't be done, the developers should consider other ways of making RSS groups possible. In an academic setting with hundreds of weblogs, a master list on the administration page does not meet our needs.

ken tompkins