Who is Smik?

Friday 15 January 2010

Education.au Blogfest #4: Monitoring Blogs

Task #4 is 2-fold.
  1. In your blog post list at least 10 blogs you think are worth following. You might like to write a little comment about the blog, the author, what you find valuable etc.
  2. What tool do you use to follow blogs? Does it have any drawbacks? What do you think are its good points?
I monitor quite a number of blogs, but don't always get around to reading all their posts.
I keep thinking I should reduce my list, but somehow that is a task that doesn't get done very often, and then I discover some people have stopped posting.
I'm just going to list some in the order that they appear in my RSS reader
My primary tool for following blogs is RSS Reader, software that runs on my computer.
It is quite an old copy and recently has been having a bit of a choke on some blogs with the result that I no longer follow them because RSS Reader hangs.

The disadvantage of using RSS reader is that you have to be on your computer.

Another thing that occurs to me is that I don't actually visit many of the blogs I've named above, because I can read the posts on my computer. So I don't always take part in the conversations that I've been talking about. I am more of a "lurker".

Other methods of following blogs
  • if you are using Blogger, then use the Bloglist gadget to create a Blogroll - also add the Followers gadget to your Blog.
    Use the Followers list provided on some Blogger blogs and then you can see those in your Reading List in your Dashboard.
    These will then also show up in your Google Reader
  • Use iGoogle
  • use Friendfeed: see http://friendfeed.com/edau2009
  • if the blog RSS feed doesn't seem to work for you, then use something like Feedmyinbox which allows you to have blog posts sent to you by email.
  • Some blogs also have a "follow me by email" link.

2 comments:

Ali Hall said...

I have tried both iGoogle and friendfeed to keep track of my posts with varying success. I tend to find that the iGoogle RSS widget 'loses' the feed I have put in after time. I have added Flux, Jane's E-learning tips and The Edublogger to Flock now.

Unknown said...

Hi Kerrie. thanks for your inspiring list. I will have to put aside some time to go and have a look at some of them in more detail.