News Aggregators are programs that allow you to load headlines and bylines of news articles from many different sources at once. The advantage to using a news aggregator is that you can quickly scan headlines from many different websites and web-based newspapers to find the articles that interest you. Then you can click on the headline to go straight to the full story in your browser.
This technology uses RSS feeds from websites to get it's information. So only websites that provide RSS feeds can be viewed through a news aggregator. And you will only see the stories that they push out through their feeds. But it is to the advantage of the sites to push a variety of stories so that you will be drawn to view their site. So most feeds are fairly extensive.
Curricular Use
News Aggregators could be used as a resource for both faculty and students in advanced language and Coffee and News courses. Rather than being the focus of a particular exercise, these programs can be used as tools for more effecient browsing of information from a large number of sources.
Faculty could use the software to quickly find appropriate articles for discussion in class without have to click extensively through large news sites. It could also be used in class to help teach students how to read headlines, without the distraction of the surrounding ads, etc. Once the headlines are discussed, you can then click on the link to go straight to the main article.
Students could also use these programs to find articles of interest to them for presentation or discussion in class.
Where do I get it?
There are many news aggregators out there and you may find others that you prefer. So far I have used these:
Macintosh: NetNewsWire Lite,
Windows: ??