I found feeds in a variety of places, including those that are familiar, such as ALA or by searching terms such as educational technology or school librarians. The links from Edublogger Awards to other sites, provided on the RavenAboutLibraries (RAL), were very extensive. I found those easiest to subscribe provided the orange logo for RSS, or those that asked me to subscribe via Google, with the icon in an easily discernable location--usually at the top or bottom. Those sites with extensive advertisements were very distracting, and I tended to navigate away from them. While I respect Joyce Valenza and her ideas, the blinking ads and opportunities kept me from subscribing. While i know RSS feeds may leave the ads off, i disliked the clutter of some commercially supported sites that some educators use.
From the awards list, I found 2 that were suberb: Edublogger with several extensive sites, linked together, and her observations about US culture were humorous--Sue Waters has her own personal blog linked to it where she comments on everything from high fructose corn syrup in Coke to improving the looks of your blog. I subscribed to her RSS feed as her tips are timely and useful. Recently she has an excellent piece on "The 4-Cs of Social Networking". In addition this site hosts blogs for students, teachers, and librarians.
Another useful site I found was a Brit named Jane Hart who publishes "Social Media In Learning", "a FREE resource aimed at all learning professionals who want a quick, easy-to-use, structured introduction to social media for formal and informal learning as well as a practical guide to using social media tools." The links from this site, never end!
Viewing various blogs is beneficial, to compare and contrast layout, ease of use, friendliness, etc. and help me to try to emulate these professionals as I develop my Librarian blog. I appreciate having a choice of spots to recieve the feeds, and I chose the Education page of my iGoogle site, so that, like the Anchorage Daily News, or New York Times, I have the latest news from Edublogger at my fingertips! Very cool.
I followed your direction and tried the Sue Waters blog. It was excellent and I think I will link to it also. The variety of information on her site is unending.
ReplyDeleteI am always interested in hearing about the blogs that others find interesting. I have to be really selective about what things I subscribe to. I end up getting too many and then I don't keep up with them. I have had to get myself to the point that if I have too many in my list or I haven't read them in too long I just mark them all as read and accept that I may end up missing something great. It offends my Pavlovian need to keep on top of every thing but I just don't have time.
ReplyDeleteAnn, this is why I am selective, and have sent the ones I'm most interested in to my iGoogle homepage; this way I see them every day, and put the rest on the Google Reader which is on the homepage too. Laurie
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