never mind the optics

I know that it’s only a matter of minutes since I posted about the Glow groups I started to create after returning from the Building Glow Communities event but I need to show you all something.  As I started to work on my groups, I realised that I had an obvious source of resources in my classroom blog.  I tried to use an XML web part to bring the RSS feed into Glow but it just didn’t look right, see screenshot below.

The text is all bunched up together and the layout does not let you easily identify the beginning and end of individual entries.  This is a shame because I thought I could pull in homework activities and their solutions in the same way that they are published to iTunes.

Luckily, there’s a very helpful Glow genius called Fraser who came to my rescue.  He has a black belt in XSL and was able to write some code that will allow anyone with a WordPress blog to import their RSS feed into Glow.  This is a major breakthrough for my personal plan for using Glow with pupils and I am sure that there will be many blogging teachers around Scotland who will be eager to take advantage of this solution.

As a before & after activity, take a look at the structure that has been given to my blog feed in the following screenshots.

Notice how the embedded video player now sits neatly amongst the text. There are also clearly recognisable download links, making the feed much more useful.

I use my classroom blog to feed four different podcasts; Advanced Higher, Higher, Intermediate 2 and Standard Grade Physics.  Wordpress category feeds keep the posts in the correct podcast and Fraser has set up the code so I can feed any combination of WordPress categories into Glow, essentially replicating the podcasting process I have been using.

This is a seriously useful piece of code to have for your Glow group.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS