By Rudolf Ammann · May 29, 2006
This has been coming together for a while—at least since we first mentioned aggregating student feeds a few months ago. After a bit of tinkering it has come together, and here’s the Dekita Orchard.
The Orchard aggregates feeds from EFL/ESL students worldwide and picks up where the Dekita Exchange leaves off. While the Exchange compiles an up-to-date list of courses in which EFL/ESL students participate in the live Web, the Orchard takes a selection of courses from that list and aggregates their feeds, thus providing easy access to the students’ work both here on Dekita and through a number of merged feeds that you can subscribe to in your feedreader of choice.
You may need to click around the Orchard a bit before you get comfortable with how it works. The left sidebar lists all the student feeds picked up by the aggregator, sorted by course. You can click on the folders to collapse the list if you choose.
The Orchard’s front page displays the most recent entries from all feeds. Click on a course link in the sidebar for the latest entries from that class, or click on any individual feed link for the latest entries from any individual student.
Dekita’s aggregator aims to provide a view of what EFL/ESL students are writing now, therefore we do not permanently archive entries and will remove old posts after a few weeks. You will need to make any comments at the original sites themselves, and point any links to any of the aggregated entries to the respective permanent archives back at the original site.
The Orchard is likely to remain a work in progress for quite a while. Your criticism, questions and suggestions will help us make it better.
And as an afterthought: if you’re not sure you understand what any of the above is about, you might find Dave Shea’s What is RSS/XML/Atom/Syndication? an enlightening read.
Also, in anticipation of a rich harvest our own Bee has gone all fruity. There will be fruitcake.
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Bee
wrote on May 30, 2006:
Well noticed! Orchards do make me fruity and nutty
So many colours, smells, shapes, textures and flavours! Can’t get enough of it!
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Jamie
wrote on June 07, 2006:
Dear Rudolf and Company,
Thanks to your earlier efforts, my students have had contact with English Teacher trainees in Japan.
The Dekita Orchard is an even greater accomplishment. I am very impressed that I can not only see a list of ESL/EFL blogs but also read them at the same time. I am about to ask the students I teach to visit the blogs in Rosa’s class. There are some very interesting topics such as table manners in different countries.
Jamie
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Rudolf
wrote on June 08, 2006:
Hi Jamie—I’m glad to learn you find this useful.
We’ve just integrated the Exchange and the Orchard a little bit more. When you click on a course link in the left sidebar and view the aggregated class page, there is now a “course homepage” link right underneath the course title, which, of course, points to the course page entered to the Exchange. Here’s your Students of Teaching English in Japan, for instance.
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