About RSS News Feeds
What is RSS?
RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
Why RSS? Benefits and Reasons for using RSS
RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter.
Why use the WCDSB RSS?
The Waterloo Catholic District School Board uses its web site to communicate important, time sensitive information such as News Releases. When subscribing to the RSS and based on your settings, the information will be available to you without having to continually check back to the web site.
What do I need to read an RSS Feed?
Web Browsers (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari)
Most up to date web browsers allow you to "bookmark" RSS Feeds. You can set up the browsers RSS options to check for new information from the RSS feed at specific time intervals and be notified of new content by an image on the browser (see below).
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 RSS Notification Example:
Web Site with no RSS Feed
Web Site with RSS Feed
Bookmarked RSS Feed 
Bookmarked RSS Feed with new content 
RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators
The main benefit of a Feed Reader is that it will notify you of added information to a website without having a web browser open.
Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.
A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.
Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many sites display a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available.
Reference: www.WhatIsRSS.com
