Friday, January 4, 2008

Thing #9

When I was working on Thing 8, I had a million questions. I should have known that Thing 9 would help me refine the work I was doing on 8. I have been playing around with the RSS feed finders for a month or so now. I am feeling a little more comfortable looking for blogs that would be of a benefit to read regularly, but I am still a little overwhelmed with the amount of time I am still spending looking for them.

Feedster was still not working the last time I checked. Google Blog Search was one of the easiest to use. Everything Google makes searching easier. I also had some success with School Library Blogs at Suprglu. I did not like Topix or Technorati. But i plan on revisiting and spendng more time on Thing 8 & 9. They were more news driven and a little overwhelming at first glance. I also want to read everyone's submission for these two Things to see what they are finding and having success with.S

My favorite, so far, has been Edublog. I like the fact that it selects "the best of the best" in various categories each year. I feel like I waste less time here. Just about everything I selected was worth spending time reading. My only concern is that I was reading on Cathy Nelson's TechoTuesday that she may have to move her blog because of limited space on Edublog. I will keep reading to see how that plays out.

As far as unusual, I really enjoyed the blog "Accents" by Deep Thinking on School Library Blogs at Suprglu. As much as I love being a librarian, reading to students, all that we do: I am lousy at voices and accents. I "stunk" in all my language classes in middle school and high school, and I am even worse at voices for characters. Honestly, I just don't think my brain is wired for it, kind of like direction. In the meantime, I will continue to read stories to my students. But sadly, the only variation will be in how loud I read it!

1 comment:

Cathy Jo Nelson said...

Edublogs is a great platform, and I feel like such a newbie at it. I erred in not hosting my pictures from the get go on Flickr or some other pix hosting site, and loading a couple of videos to the blog as well. Should have gone ahead and put them on YouTube or some video hosting service. Otherwises, I'd have plenty of space available. Your first 100mb is free, and that's pretty much true of all blog services. And the 100mb should be enough to carry a blogger for two to three years. But my mistakes in hostingpictures and videos cost me precious space, and now to continue w/ Edublogs I must pay fr it. A newbie mistake. But I am seriously looking at hosting my blog on my own domain anyway, nd now is a good time b/c it is time to pay for the service too. And James Farmer (Edublogs person) has let me know that very soon Edublogs will be available to those who want their own domain too. I would have had to use Wordpress, but they get constant spam attention, something I don't have time for. Edublogs ROCKS in dealing with spam. So I am biding my time for edublogs to allow me to use them but host on my own webspace--there are several things I like about Edublogs. I hope I am modeling good library blogging standards for you.I target anyone interested in libraries and educational technology, It is always a pleasant surprise to find that I have readers, so thanks.

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