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

• ABC Background Briefing
  Background Briefing is Radio National's agenda-setting current affairs radio documentary program. It varies from week to week in style and content, sometimes doing straight investigative journalism, sometimes exploring important ideas or social issues in on-the-road documentary style. You will find profiles of politicians, analysis of behind-the-scenes issues that shape society, and sometimes an exploration of an idea – or perhaps a murder.
  Sometimes education issues surface, at other times just interesting topics. The briefings are usually mp3 files
  URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/bbing.xml
  
• AustralianIT.com.au-government
  This is the Australian newspaper and the feed comes through about 3 times a week. Occasionally educational issues surface.
  URL: http://feeds.news.com.au/public/rss/2.0/ausit_itnews_govt_370.xml
  
• Flux - Future Lab
  Flux is a blog hosted by Futurelab, written by and aimed at people who are interested in discussing innovation and education, across all sectors.
  URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/futurelab-flux
  
• Digital Education
  Katie Ash is a writer and Web producer for Education Week Digital Directions. Kathleen Kennedy Manzo has been covering curriculum and standards for Education Week since 1996, including federal, state, and local policies, instructional materials, and teaching practices. Michelle Davis is a senior writer for Education Week Digital Directions.
  It is a US produced blog for Education Week
  URL: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/index.xml
  
• Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day
  A daily item of e-learning interest selected by Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.
  A terrific source when I have time to check it.
  URL: http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/rss.xml
• Net Traveller- Tom Worthington
  This a good Australian one to follow, but a bit frustrating because he has set his RSS feed so that only the headlines show in your reader. You have to go to his site to read the post. I often don't bother unless the headlines is particularly attention grabbing.
  URL: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/rss.xml
• Teaching Generation Z - Graham Wegner
  This is a local guy with his finger on the pulse, a primary school teacher whose comments are always worth thinking about.
  URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TeachingGenerationZ
• Sue Waters - The Edublogger
  Tips, tricks, ideas and help with using web 2.0 technologies and edublogs.
  Always worth a look.
  URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheEdublogger
  

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.