We have made things easy for you in terms of finding each other’s public blogs by way of the EDCI Blog Hub, but that won’t be there forever. Individuals can use “RSS Readers” to subscribe to “feeds” from websites. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or often Really Simple Syndication. It sounds too techy, but just think of it as helping you to “follow” blogs in a “reader” program, much like how Instagram is a “reader” you use to follow accounts.

One reader we recommend is Feedly. Note that it is US-based, so if you choose to create an account there, be aware of that as it relates to your privacy. Read up on our Privacy Resource page if you have not already done so. You can subscribe to news blogs, political blogs, blogs of other educators, blogs of your learners, etc.

You also have the option of subscribing to blogs within WordPress.

If you have a favourite reader you would like to see mentioned here, please let me know.

If you are interested in exploring more advanced, though not that hard, RSS aggregation and want to learn more about how we set up the EDCI 338 Blog Hub, feel free to chat with your instructor. In short, we used a WordPress Plug-in called “Feedzy,” which copies content from blog RSS feeds and imports that into the blog it’s installed on. If you are using a site on opened.ca, there is a plugin available to you called “FeedWordPress” that you can use to do the same thing as Feedzy, but with more options.

How to find an RSS feed for a site.

Note that following the links to those feeds will only show you a page of code. You need to use a feed reader to view the actual posts. We have provided instructions for setting up Feedly here. You do not need to pay for a subscription to Feedly, the free version will work for this course.