... A what? A blog reader? This is what I was thinking when I was asked to read about and choose a blog reader for one of my grad school classes. Basically, this is what I have learned: a blog reader is a place where you can put the URL of all the blogs you follow and it will organize and keep them for you so that you can access everything you love all in the same place. And why should you care? Welll, if you are like me and don't follow a lot of blogs, this may not seem like it would be that helpful, but as I delved into the assignment and began to find things to put on my blog reader, I learned that this could be a beneficial resource for staying organized and staying up to date with my field (education and library). So, stay with me for a few minutes while I try to explain why a blog reader may be just what you have been looking for.
If you are learning about a new field or trying to stay ahead of the game in your current field, it is important to follow social media and see all the latest trends and updates to what is going on. Instagram and Twitter are great to engage with other people and share in what they are doing, however in both of these platforms information is shooting by quickly and you may miss an important link or update if you are unplugged for awhile. Keep your Instagram. Keep your Twitter. This is a totally different beast. A blog reader is unique just to you, you can organize your information specifically how you want it and get your information from sources that you handpick. If this sounds interesting to you, then blogs and and a correctly chosen blog reader may be just what you need.
Alright, if you are still with me and have decided to look into blog readers, there are several out there to choose from. Apparently back in the day, Google had a reader that was the bomb-diggity, but it is no longer supported, so you need to look at other options. You will have to pick the reader that best jives with your needs, as I did when I looked through 10 options provided in an article on Zapier (click on the link below for the article). I am needing one that is simple, with a user-friendly interface and will keep everything organized in reverse chronological order. I immediately crossed several off my list. The Old Reader is made for socializing in my mind- sharing information and giving recommendations, and this is not what I need. Bloglovin' is for personal and leisure reading and Netvibes is for marketing- so both of these were easy "no's". Selfoss turned me off with its name- a ridiculous reason, but true, as well as its description about "best for customizing" and I don't want to do that. After that, the remaining 6 all looked like they could work. I looked at the user-interface for each of them, and I crossed NewsBlur off the list because it wants your feedback on each article so that it can curate articles that best fit exactly what you want. That left me with 5. Honestly, I decided which to use based on the interface. So, which one did I choose? I chose Feedly, because I like the table of contents down the left side of the page and the simple text used to list the headlines with a small image in the main screen. There was nothing wrong with the others; Feedly just appealed to me more.
Once I chose my feed reader, I decided to put some feeds on it! When I set it up, I was able to type in search criteria such as "library leaders", "education", "school library", etc. and it pulled up possible choices of blogs to follow. From this search, I was able to add School Library Journal, TED-ed, An Educator's Search for Tech Tools, and Dangerously Irrelevant. I then typed in specific URLs to add my personal blogs, my professor's blog, and several other students-in-my-cohort's blogs. I then started to get more detailed and searched for "makerspace" blogs.
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| My Feedly page |
Five of the feeds that I really love:
1. Ted-Ed has fabulous educational videos presented by well-educated and engaging speakers that are wonderful to share with students.
2. School Library Journal has information that is extremely relevant to my career and education. For example, the top article today is "A library is not a library without a librarian" and advocacy is an important issue in the library!
3. The Sassy Bibliophile is the blog of a librarian I follow that is upbeat and full of fantastic shenanigans and ideas to inspire greatness in our students.
4. Education: NPR gives important information about what is going on in the world of education and the policies and events affecting my students.
5. Stress Relief 4 Teachers is a blog run by my good friend Art Lieberman who shares ways to make teacher life easier, students happier, and the school more motivated and upbeat. He also writes books, shares podcasts, and other fabulous happenings on the blog that share a wealth of information.
6. Creative library programs shares ideas about how to create amazing programs in the library to get kids reading. Since I am new to the library, this will help me get ideas for my students.
7. I also have a Tumblr account I use for library and book things. It is less educational than this blog, but it does have some awesome content. Please take a gander! https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wannalibrary
As you can see, I have found some awesome things so far. However, I still have so much to find. I plan to add more to my blog reader as I go, as I feel that this could be a very beneficial way to follow blogs that are beneficial to my interests and education without having to hop all over the internet to find them. I feel that this is definitely a fantastic addition to following educators and librarians on Twitter and Instagram because I feel like this information will be easier to find and I can go at my own pace without having to scroll down the last 85 posts from my sister-in-law before finding the post about the newest Makerspace trend.
Thank you for learning with me!
Emily
Sources used:
Volvovski, V. (2018, September 21). The 10 best RSS reader apps in 2018. Retrieved from https://zapier.com/blog/best-rss-feed-reader-apps/.
Blogger image taken from http://www.socialmediaimpact.com/5ways-to-build-your-blog-readership/internet-blog-reader-concept/#.
Hi Emily,
ReplyDeleteThe narrative derived from your research was very interesting and helpful. I think most of us agree that Feedly is the most appealing feed reader. I also think is simple to use. I discoverd Tumblr with this assignment and loved it. I think it will be very useful to share many interesting things library related.