In starting to think about reading lists for next year’s courses I came across a new feature in Google reader which enables the sharing of ‘bundles’ of feeds.

I started to actively encourage students to read blog posts a couple of years ago – both those written by members of the course as well as other relevant bloggers on the topics we were covering. Students were (are?) reluctant users of Google reader so I incorporated feeds into netvibes class portals as well as  grazr which merges, filters and publishes multiple feeds in widgets. It works fine but because I use Google reader as my work horse rss reader I still have to prepare new subscriptions for use in netvibes.

Google though has now realised the use of collecting feeds together and publishing them as a kind of reading list. This is what the new ‘bundles’ feature allows. It’s not immediately obvious where the feature is – you can access it from ‘Browse for stuff’:

Google offers loads of their own bundles but the most useful feature is the ability to create your own.

And the process is simply one of dragging those feeds you want to include from your feed pane onto the bundle. Give it a title and description and save as a shared item.

You can make as many bundles as you like, edit them and provide a link to a public web page where the feeds are shown.

That web page can be the assigned as ‘readings’ as it stands. Students can also subscribe to it (i.e.) the bundle in order to read it in their own feed reader – including Facebook.

So, a useful tool which answers the question as to how blogs could be included simply as reading resources for undergraduate and postgraduate courses.