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You've been using Bloglines now to publish a blog, but the main purpose of Bloglines is to be a blog-aggregator or, more generally, an RSS feed reader.
What does that mean? As you can see, the content of blogs is changing all the time. The best blogs are the ones that frequently have new content. So the question then becomes, how are you going to keep up with all the new things that are being publishing in your favorite blogs? A blog aggregator keeps a watch on your favorite blogs, and tells you when new content is available.
In addition, you can keep watch on all kinds of websites that have changing content. Most online newspapers offer what is called an "RSS feed" so that you can read all the latest news stories. The OU Daily offers an RSS feed, which is how I am able to read the OU Daily every day, even though I am not on campus to pick up a physical copy.
For this assignment, I would like for you to subscribe to the Online Course Announcements blog (the blog where I publish the announcements for this class) and to the OU Daily online newspaper.
Subscribing to Online Course Announcements
There are many different ways to subscribe to a blog or RSS feed, and there are lots of shortcuts depending on the type of browser you use. But no matter what browser you are using, you should be able to subscribe using the buttons I have provided below.
Subscribe to Online Course Announcements
When you click on this button, you will see the Bloglines subscription box:
You don't need to adjust any of those settings (you can edit them later if you want) - but you must CLICK the Subscribe button at the bottom of the screen! The feed will not be added UNTIL you click this Subscribe button!
Now you should be able to click on the Feeds tab and see the Feed that you have just subscribed to! You are probably also subscribed to the Bloglines News feed, since that is automatically added to your feeds when you create your Bloglines account. You will see the list of feeds on the left, and the latest content from the selected feed on the right. When a feed has new content, it will appear in bold to alert you that there is new content for that feed.
Subscribing to OU Daily
Now give it another try with the OU Daily:
Don't forget to click the Subscribe button. The actual subscription will not go through until you actually click on the Subscribe button - and you may have to scroll down the screen a little bit to see the Subscribe button.
Finish the assignment
To complete this assignment, take a screenshot showing Feeds area (see instructions for screenshots if you are not sure how to do that), and send the screenshot as an attachment in the email to the instructor. If you have already subscribed to lots of RSS feeds using Bloglines, that's great - it doesn't matter if I can see these two feeds in your list of feeds if you already have a long list of feeds!
If you are in the Myth-Folklore class, use the Subject Line Myth-Folklore Bloglines Feeds; if you are in Indian Epics, Indian Epics Bloglines Feeds; or for World Literature, World Lit Bloglines Feeds.
When you have sent in the email, you can do the Gradebook Declaration for Extra Credit. And now go wild: you can subscribe to all kinds of feeds - Bloglines has some "quick pick" subscription lists you might want to check out to learn more about what kinds of content is available via RSS feeds. Enjoy!