Diigo: Growth Mindset stream in Canvas

In a previous post, I wrote about using Diigo to keep track of growth mindset content (I come across a lot of relevant articles in my daily reading!), and in this post I'll explain how to take the Diigo RSS feed and display it in Canvas. This is a perfect example of live content: as you browse online, you just bookmark articles in Diigo, write up some annotation to explain your interest in the article, grab an image if you want... and presto: that appears in Canvas too, automatically.

You can see the Canvas page here: Growth Mindset Playground Diigo. And remember, that's a completely open, public page — just click and go! Here's a screenshot:

Here's what you need to make this work:

1. Use Diigo to create bookmarks. It's easy to create a Diigo account (they have some special services for educators too), and there are some browser plugins that allow you to save bookmarks easily as you are browsing. Think about how you like to search and organize the articles as you choose your tags.

2. Optional: add annotations. I usually bookmark lots of stuff, and when I get time I then go back through the bookmarks and add notes (Diigo lets you edit bookmarks later to add notes). When I annotate an article, I add the tag "annotated." That allows me to easily find the bookmarks that are annotated, and I can also search for "NOT annotated" in order to see which articles don't have annotations (yet).

3. Optional: grab images. In addition to annotations that you add to a bookmark, Diigo lets you grab an image to save along with the URL. I just recently started saving images in Diigo this way (inspired by my use of Pinterest, which is totally image-driven), and I am really liking how the images provide good visual cues to help me remember the contents of the articles.

4. Put the Diigo RSS in Inoreader. You can then follow these instructions for Inoreader RSS in Canvas. Diigo is a really useful RSS service: there is an RSS feed for any Diigo search in my bookmarks, and the RSS link is at the bottom of each Diigo search page. So, for example, when I search for my Diigo bookmarks that are for growth mindset with annotations but not videos and not from my own blog, I get this page, with an RSS link at the bottom:
growthmindset annotated NOT videos NOT gmzone

So, just follow those instructions, using the Diigo RSS feed for step #2 in those instructions.

And have fun: Diigo is a really powerful tool, and you can build your own set of tags and feeds to keep track of important while also sharing it with your students!

Canvas: Inoreader RSS

I'll be collecting different examples of how to use the RSS features of Inoreader to deliver live content in Canvas. Unlike other RSS feed readers, Inoreader allows to create your own RSS feeds by remixing existing feeds, and it can then export that content as an RSS feed or as HTML. The HTML option means you can display the content of an RSS feed in a Canvas page!

So, just to take one example, here is a page in Canvas which contains the RSS feed from my Growth Mindset Cats blog: Canvas RSS-Inoreader.

Here's how to set something like this up:

1. Get an Inoreader account. Everything you need to do is part of the free Inoreader service! Go to Inoreader.com.

2. Find the RSS feed you want to use. You can get the RSS feed for a blog, or you can grab the feed for a specific label at that blog. Any kind of RSS feed will work.

3. Subscribe to the feed in Inoreader. Just copy-and-paste the feed address into the upper right-hand corner. Make sure you add the feed to a folder; you can put multiple feeds in the same folder if you want to combine different sources.

4. Export the folder as RSS/HTML. Click on the folder, then click on Folder Settings at the top of the Inoreader screen, then Folder Information, and then click Export to turn it on. After you turn on the export, you will see the different Export options:

5. Configure the HTML Clip. Now that you have turned on the folder for export, click on the HTML Clip link and make your choices. For the Canvas page I made, I put in a title and set the items to 5, with "magazine" as the view option. 

6. Configure the iframe in Canvas. Copy the iframe code from Inoreader, and then adjust the width and height as needed. I set the width="750" and height="1400" but you can choose what best suits your needs (although you need at least 750 pixels width for the magazine view). Paste the HTML code into your Canvas page and you are good to go!

After you set up the RSS feed(s) like this, the content will update in Canvas automatically!

RSS Tech Tips

I'll be using this page to index my posts here with RSS Tech Tips. Let me know (leave comment below or ping me @OnlineCrsLady) if you'd like some help with this, and I'll pop this one up to the top of the to-do list.