Subscribing to YouTube RSS Feeds

I’m back in Banff and pretty happy about it. Anyone who’s been here before would understand. Here’s a link to the photos I’ve taken (and still taking) in the Canadian Rockies. On Thursday, it was TEDxBANFF, which was a singular treat for me (more here). Then, after Friday up in Edmonton, I’m back in Banff for the last day of “Alberta Future,” a conference by the CTS Council (Career & Technology Studies). I was impressed with a video that the council produced as a preview to the conference.

I’ve decided to change my closing keynote a bit, from my typical delivery of “Rebooting the Basics” to some of the learning literacies of the 21st century, specifically tapping into the ongoing and global conversations related to pathway careers being added to Alberta’s curriculum.

One of the specific avenues to knowledge I’d like to include is subscribing to YouTube videos based on a YouTube search. The barrier I’m having to question my way through is the fact that YouTube seems not to have a convenient display of their RSS feeds in the same what that Google’s news and blog searches do. So I did some blog searches, and found a post in the Google Operating System blog, “YouTube Feeds.”

So, to have a resource with instructions, I’m posting this blog entry to link to in my online handouts:

1. If you are looking for the latest YouTube videos related to robotics, or any other topic, then you start with the base feed URL:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?orderby=updated&vq=<search term>

2. Simply add the search term, robotics, to the end (replace <search term>) so that it reads…

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?orderby=updated&vq=robotics

A listing of the most recent YouTube videos with robotics in the title or description, generated with Google Reader. (Click the image to enlarge)

3. Then, using your RSS reader, subscribe to that URL. If you’re using Google Reader, then simply run your reader
4. Click the [Add a subscription] button
5. Paste your feed URL into the textbox, and click [Add].

And you’ll be subscribed and receive a list of the latest YouTube videos that include the term, robotics.

In addition to YouTube keyword searches, you can also construct RSS feed URLs for:

• Search in a category,
• Latest videos from a specific channel,
• Feeds for favorite videos,
• Your subscriptions, and
• Playlists