Saving Time with Blog Readers
Technology has us connected more than ever before. While there are some wonderful ideas out there, most people may not know about them because they simply do not have the time to find them. Perhaps you may want to find some great ideas for you to use, but you need an easier way to bring the ideas together. That's where blog readers can come in handy.
Blog readers serve as a tool to unite the current blogs you like to keep up with and perhaps even help you find some others you may like as well. There are some great ones out there such as: Bloglovin', Feedly, Bloglines, NewsBlur, Digg Reader and Newsvibe. While these blog readers all serve the same purpose, I have to say that I found Bloglovin' to the most user friendly. It had a nice simplistic feel to it. It listed only the blogs I chose off to the right-hand side, a few featured posts and one advertisement. The blogs that I was choosing to follow were listed in the orders they were published. They each had a nice bold title along with a picture as well as an option to like, share, save and mark as read. If you're into finding new blogs you might enjoy Digg Reader or NewsBlur better. Personally simplicity is what I am interested in and Bloglovin' had it.
One of the best blogs I found was called the "Busy Librarian." Besides it being beautiful to look at it, it had direct links to podcasts given by the "Busy Librarian," (a.k.a. Matthew C. Winner) and featured authors. It made me think that it could be a great link to let students listen to so that they could hear more about how real authors think and develop their work. Another great thing about his blog is that he relates books to how they would work best for students, whether by learning something new or just finding an extraordinary story that will excite new readers. The best part is that it is completely free! In addition to podcasts he likes to write features on books entitled (Best Book Ever!-This Week) and has presentations linked to his site. He frequently hosts webinars for the ALA, Teacher Librarian (TL Virtual Cafe) and EdWeb.
Watch.Connect.Read was another great blog to check out. I liked it because it specializes in book trailers. Book trailers are something that students really enjoy. While we may not always have the time to create book trailers for our students, what better way than to connect to some that are already on the net? This is what this blog offers. When I looked into it, "Mr. Schu," the teacher-librarian in charge had a trailer on Katherine Applegate's Caldecott winner "Crenshaw," as well as a transcript posted of his interview with Mr. Sharp (3rd grade teacher who hosted the author's visit). The teacher and his class were the winners of a nation-wide contest based on collecting canned food items for hunger. As winners, Ms. Applegate visited their school and talked about her various works and authorship. Truly exciting! http://frame.bloglovin.com/?post=4540229927&blog=2300157
If you're interested in high school librarianship the "Unquiet Librarian," is for you. Between pictures loaded with ideas for best utilizing your library and even some student interviews based on lessons and tools they have used, you get a real sense of what this librarian is all about. She enjoys facilitating and supporting her students to a higher level of understanding by getting them to reflect deeply on what they have learned as well as getting staff input as to what direction they would like the library to go in for that year. She offers some deep, critical-level thinking of her plans and invites you to do the same. All in all in makes for quite an enlightening experience.
The Librarian in Cute Shoes is a great website. The librarian, Mrs. Alaniz shares some of her newest favorite books. Several stunning books were featured, "Waiting," by Kevin Henkes, "The Girl Who Could Fly," by Victoria Forester and "The Night World," by Mordecai Gorstein. There are loads of great books to check out here as well as her take on some of the newer books.
Last but not least is a great blog that is not only beneficial to librarians, but to the staff they serve as well, "Free Technology for Teachers." I have to admit I had no idea a blog like this even existed. It offers tutorials for putting quizzes online, youtube videos for learning more about Writer's Workshop, where to find free passes for students to national parks, glossaries of educational/technology language and even help with how to publish and market some of your teaching ideas.
With all of the great stuff there is online, it's great to know that you can now keep altogether in one place, in a place called Blog Readers!
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I think blogs are a great way to advocate. Not only do they share librarian knowledge, we can direct others to resources. I think many of us like the ease of digital but many times we have to find a place to start.
ReplyDeleteAll of the sites you mentioned make it a point to offer what I would call repositories to help teachers do their work better, allow students to choose books they'll like to read, or tell how to incorporate technology into the classroom. I hope you can do this for your teacher colleagues as well.
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