What type of creature is an aggregator?

I apologize for the late posting. The heat wave here in St. Louis is wreaking havoc on the power grid.I have been replacing transformers almost daily!!!
As far as our assignment goes ,the RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed is an awesome tool. And as usual, I had no idea that it existed. The aggregator helps us to keep up with new info from our favorite blogs and Webpages and on top of this it enables others to know when you have added something new to your blog or Webpage. Pretty amazing!!!!! I read an article that I thought used a good analogy. Most people who still enjoy reading the newspaper have developed techniques for getting what they want without reading every article or even every headline. Most of us have learned to pick only those sections that interest us and then we scan headlines. When we find a headline that is important to us, we begin to read the article.
Similarly, RSS and other "feeds" allow us to automatically scan the "headlines" from pre-selected Web sources. If the item looks interesting from the headline, we can "click" to get the full article.
I used Google Reader as my aggregator for no other reason than our book recommended it and it was easy.I subscribed to a few classmates blogs, ESPN, US News and World Report, and a very interesting Labor Union feed which I have posted below. It has a story on the graduating class of the NLC and a lot of other useful information for labor enthusiasts.
The educational value of the RSS feeds are endless. Among the benefits would be the ease of sharing information from many sources, the ability to share the task of information publishing, and the simplification of gathering and evaluating information from multiple sources. Feeds could be used in class blogs, school schedule or sports schedules, ability to monitor research, job searches. The list goes on. I realize now I should not have feared this "aggregator" creature.