Customize your Own RSS Announcement Feed with Evernote

[aamundson]

As a humanities teacher, I love using the RSS feed for Announcements.  There are some phenomenal news feeds and podcasts that support a variety of my course content and it was awesome to have the announcements automatically appear in my Canvas courses.

My biggest frustration, though, was when I found great resources while navigating the internet that I wanted to make available for my students.  I would copy the address, open my Canvas instance, navigate to the particular course, open an announcement, embed the URL with an explanation for my students, and publish it to my course.

What if you're on your phone and find a great link while navigating social media?  The steps to posting can be prohibitive.  You can set up an external feed and "clip" articles to it!

There are two different methods (that we know of): Evernote Webclipper and OneNote Webclipper. This post will address Evernote, but the steps are similar for OneNote!

Steps for Creating a Customized RSS Feed using Evernote:

1. Download and explore Evernote here.
2. Create a specific Notebook that will be dedicated to your RSS feed.
3. Download and install the Evernote Webclipper here.
4. Create a free account with Zapier.  Note: You can create 5 free "Zaps."  If you are creating a feed or two, the free option will cover all of your basic needs!
5. Begin a New Zap: 
6. Follow the prompts to create a "Trigger Event" (the action that starts the Zap process):
   1. Choose App: Evernote
   2. Choose Trigger Event: New Note
   3. Evernote Account: sign in to your Evernote Account to link it to Zapier
   4. When asked to Customize Note, select the Notebook that you created specifically for your feed.
7. Follow the prompts to create an "Action" (the result of the Trigger event created above):
   1. Create the action (this :  When asked, Choose App: RSS by Zapier
   2. Choose action Event: Create Item in Feed.
   3. Customize Item: Create a unique FeedURL 
      1. Make sure to Copy to Clipboard your full Feed URL to use as you set up your Canvas RSS Announcement Feed.
   4. You do not need to enter anything under "Max Records"
   5. Set your Item Title: 
   6. Set your Source URL: 
   7. Provide a brief description of your Feed: 
   8. The remaining options (Author Name, Email, Link, etc) can be left blank.
   9. Select "Continue"
   10. Select "Test and Continue"
8. Use the web clipper to start the process!
   1. Navigate to any website that you would like to add to an RSS Feed
   2. Use your web clipper and "Save Clip" to the pre-determined Evernote Folder that you established specifically for your RSS feed.

NOTE:  There will be a delay between when you clip an article and when it appears in your Announcement feed.  Most of my tests are delayed a few hours, but I have seen shorter and longer!

Enjoy customizing your own RSS feed!!