Week 3 -- Reading and Finding and Managing Blogs

Since we're already half-way through Week 3, we're going to use this week and next week to do a bunch of separate but connected tasks that will hopefully make sense at the end! The "theme" is blogs -- how to find 'em, manage them and keep up (read 'em).

Activity #1
Sign up for an account with Google Reader or Bloglines
(both are big players in this field and offer a variety of rich functionality -- although I'm using Google Reader these days, I've used and liked both -- if I were going to tip you in a direction I'd suggest Google Reader but that's somewhat because you can then add a "gadget" to your iGoogle desktop which is handy)

These are "news aggregators" or ways to subscribe to blogs (or other websites with regularly published information). Sure, you can visit interesting blogs directly and check with them from time to time in order to see what's new. But that can get overwhelming when there might be lots of different blogs (like our group's!) you want to keep up with. An aggregator allows you to tell it the blogs you want to watch. Then there's one place to see what's new. That's how I know when you guys have posted something! I don't have to check them regularly or individually - it comes to me.

Activity #2
After you've created an account in either Bloglines or Google Reader, subscribe to the Pierce Learning 2.0 blog. Then subscribe to the blogs of our members (all those links on the right). This is a test of your cutting and pasting skills!

Activity #3
Look at this list of blogs I've collected. Add a "Tacoman" blog to your subscriptions and a few more that catch your eye (hint: "Savage Chickens" and stuff in the Education category).

Activity #4
Okay!!!!! Whew! The hard part is over. What you should be doing now is checking your Bloglines/Google Reader regularly. Try reading your "subscriptions" as a daily habit. Even if you're just skimming stuff that's okay -- give the time you can but practice it as a habit. And keep posting to your own blog cause that's giving other people stuff to read in their Google/Bloglines account!

Extra credit:
If you chose Google Reader, add its gadget to your iGoogle page (go to "add stuff" in the top right corner). Then it can just be part of looking at your iGoogle page regularly but all in one place.

Next: finding other blogs to read (or "there is so much more out there than what Lynn's heard of).