Let's go a little deeper into NetNewsWire--which, I remind you, is now free. If you haven't read this earlier post, start there unless you fancy yourself a bit tech savvy (meaning you understand the concept of RSS).

You collect all of your RSS feeds in NetNewsWire. You read all of the posts that arrive in NetNewsWire from all of the sites to which you subscribed (this is almost always free). As you come across a post you find of interest, you can open it in a tab in NetNewsWire to see the actual webpage or open it in your default web browser. These are the standard options you would expect to find in any RSS aggregator.

This is what I call munching through the feeds. It's a quick process of skimming and scanning, even using the search features if you're looking for something in particular, to find important or interesting information from your collection of RSS feeds.

Post to Your Blog
But you have more options. You can select a portion (or the whole thing for that matter) of an important post and click on "Post to Weblog." NetNewsWire launches your blogging GUI software* and creates a new post containing the highlighted material. At the end of the quotation NetNewsWire adds a citation to the source of the quoted material. What an efficient way for educators to work professionally! (You can customize the look and feel of this feature if you're feeling uber geeky.)

Do You Have a Del.icio.us Account?
You can also select "Post to del.icio.us" and NetNewsWire, using your del.icio.us account settings, opens a standard del.icio.us window for you to fill out thus saving the URL to your del.icio.us account.

Clipping Folders Rock My World
But here is one of my favorite features: you can create Clipping Folders. Let me explain by example. As a teacher I could create a clipping folder for each of the subjects or units I teach. I come across important resources from my RSS feeds that I want to share with my students. As I read the resource in NetNewsWire and decide I want to share a post with a class, I click on "Add to Clippings."

I then drag the clipping from the general clippings folder to one of the specific clippings folders I created. For this example, we will say I created a "Civil War" clippings folder where I'm collecting all of the posts on the Civil War that I want to share with my Social Studies students. In one location, my "Civil War" clippings folder, I can build a webquest for my students.

Now this is where the program rocks! I tell NetNewsWire to create an RSS feed for my "Civil War" clippings folder. It gives me a link (URL) to the RSS feed for my "Civil War" clippings folder. (Don't worry about how it does this. It's just very clever!) I post the RSS feed link to my blog and require my students subscribe to it.

Wow! Now every time I add a site to the "Civil War" clippings folder, it shows up in each of my student's RSS aggregator, where ever they are, for them to read and study.

Not Just for Teachers
System and state level curriculum specialists, this has important implications for your work as well. You can have the educators you supervise subscribe to specific clippings folders you create.

Public Relations can set up a clippings folder in which you add posts from schools and teachers who have done noteworthy work you wish to highlight. Then place that RSS feed in a column on the system's main website. Set it to show the 5 most recent posts from your clipping folder. Now you have a simple way to distribute fresh highlights to your system website from individual websites in your school district--yet another important reason to have blogs as school websites instead of regular html pages! Don't forget to have the local paper(s) subscribe to this feed as well.

Mobile Access
NetNewsWire also offers you access to your RSS feeds on your mobile phone as well. You can skim the post summaries on your iPhone. As you read the summary, that post is marked read. Send the ones you want to read in detail to your general clippings folder. When you have time and are seated at a computer with a larger screen, you will notice the summaries you read on your phone are marked read on the computer. You can go back to the general clippings folder to read the posts you wanted to revisit in more detail.

Windows Users
I am assuming that NewsGator Technology's Windows RSS feed aggregator, FeedDemon, would have to have very similar functionality to NetNewsWire as the company owns both.

More...
I've only scratched the surface. NetNewsWire has more powerful functionality than I've discussed so far. Here are a few things to whet your interest: smart folders that search your subscriptions intelligently; special subscriptions from search engines, tags, bloglines, even local files; most and least viewed statistics; bandwidth usage per feed, etc.

Now That You're All Excited
In order to use clipping folders and use the mobile features I believe you have to have a paid annual subscription with NewsGator. The annual subscription isn't expensive, and I do not know if they offer site licenses. I would suggest taking things one step at a time. Download the aggregator. Use it. If it's a comfortable fit, explore it in more detail. When you fall in love, purchase a subscription.

* Blogging GUI Software: This will be the subject of some future post I'm sure. But for now: You can purchase really inexpensive programs that run on your computer and link you to your blog. Rather than using your web browser to publish to your blog, you launch the program and fill in the window. Click publish. Done. These programs often add additional functionality to publishing (making adding pictures from your computer or from flickr easier, for example) and are especially helpful when you publish to multiple blogs. I really like ecto (Mac and Windows). I have played a little bit with MarsEdit (Mac only), and Adobe's Contribute (Mac and Windows). I'm sure others exist as well.