How to aggregate feeds on Iblog IUP.

One of the basic advantages to reading blogs is that new posts are communicated via RSS feeds. You can use a personal feed-reader to keep track of current content from many blogs. You can also aggregate (collect) recent posts from multiple blogs in a single space.  This method does not keep track of what you have read but it does allow for a single reading stop if, for instance, you want to assign a class to keep up with their classmates indvidual blogs.  Also, this method should also be useful if you wanted to have students keep up with a handful of third-party blogs.

Since default names for IUP blogs use the students’ usernames, we can build a list of blog addresses for all the students in a class with about 13 steps.

1. Visit MYIUP, access class, and select email class.
2. Copy and paste emails into word
3. Use search/replace to strip @iup.edu
4. Use “change/case” to render four-letter usernames in lowercase.
5. Paste list into spreadsheet
6. add a column to the left with “http://iblog.iup.edu/”
7. add a column to the right with “/feed/”
8. Copy back into notepad
9. Use search and replace to eliminate the tabs
10. Copy and paste back into spreadsheet

You now have a list of your students default blog feeds.

Use a third party aggregating widget like “FeedWind”

11. Create a “PAGE” (not a post) in your campus blog
12. Toggle the visual editor off
13. Paste the Feedwind code into the page, save and publish.

Here’s an sample page aggregating content from my students’ individual blogs:

http://iblog.iup.edu/sherwood/digital-comp-lit-pedagogy-blog-fee/