Do you work at a computer most of the day? Would you like to be alerted when MCPS dismisses school early, declares a system-wide emergency, or has other news? If so, the MCPS Newsfeed is for you. Follow the steps on this page and your computer will alert you to our news when we publish it on our web site.
MCPS produces plenty of news. The public announcements in the News area of our home page are updated frequently, but it’s difficult to know when to visit the site to track latest developments. Now, thanks to XML and RSS, we can use the MCPS Newsfeed to alert web users when we publish a new announcement. We push the content to you so you don’t have to remember to come to us. This is particularly useful if we have an emergency, such as an early dismissal or other unusual event.
The XML button (XML) at the top of News column on the MCPS home page links to what is called an RSS Feed. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS enables us to create a flow of headlines that web users can view, then click on to visit the MCPS web page with the announcement. RSS also spares email systems from having to deal with spam and heavy loads of news-related email.
Here’s a good, non-technical explanation by Slate:
How To Speed-Read the Net: Ditch your browser – RSS makes surfing for news a joy
1. Download and install a newsreader (also called a news aggregator) on your computer. Here are some popular, free readers:
If you are using Mozilla FireFox as your browser, you can download Sage, an extension which allows you to view newsfeeds in your browser. See Sage by selecting 'News' from the left navigation menu at: http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/
2. Visit sites with feeds to which you’d like to subscribe, such as MCPS, news web sites, blogs, and other sources.
3. Subscribe. You typically click on a Subscribe or orange XML button, such as the one at the top of the News column on our home page. A new browser window opens showing you the XML code, which you can ignore. You typically copy and paste the XML page’s url from your browser’s Address/Location window into your reader. Be sure to read the directions for your reader before doing this the first time.
4. The news comes to you. After you subscribe to the feed, the reader runs on your computer’s desktop and alerts you when one of your feeds has new content. It typically checks the feed for new content once an hour, so if you want to be alerted more frequently, change your reader’s settings. (Our staff has set ours to check every 10 or 15 minutes.)
5. Scan the headlines. When you see a headline with news of interest in your reader, click on it and the story will open in a new browser window. |
