Bloglines: Exacerbating My ADD

As if I needed one more online distraction, I’ve gotten hooked on Bloglines, an RSS Feed Reader. (In English - a single webpage that shows when your favorite blogs have been updated.) It’s called an aggregator, but I believe that’s just a typo for “aggravator.”

Right now I’ve got 15 feeds of blogs of professional interest that generate (in aggregate) quite a number of new entries every day:

2 Cents Worth (David Warlick)
Alice in InfoLand’s blog (Alice Yucht)
Bloglines | News
The Committed Sardine Blog (Ian Jukes)
Cool Tools
Dictionary.com Word of the Day
The Ghost of Charlie Hoban
The Google Weblog
Kathy Schrock’s Kaffeeklatsch
MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors
Quotations Weblog
Quotes of the Day
The Shifted Librarian
Spyware Daily
Wired News

Bloglines is a simple tool to use. Paste the URL into the little blank provided and click “subscribe” after it finds the site. Delete the blogs you no longer wish to have listed. I’m afraid my list seems to be growing rather than shrinking, however.

I suppose I am the last person on the planet to know about this, but I recommend it highly to others afflicted with ADD and need something to keep them from getting their real work accomplished. Or to those who want to know more about the kinds information and ways of getting to it that kids are into.

So what blogs am I not reading that I should be?
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3 Comments »
Take a look at:

1. Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed (there is a good RSS guide on his site also).
2. Michael Lorenzen’s The Information Literacy Land of Confusion library instruction, librarianship, information literacy, and search engines.
3. Librarian Way Connections for Librarians web-based Technology and Research Resources
4. Tim Lauer’s Education Technology Principal at Meriwether Lewis Elementary School, Portland OR
5. Phil Bradley’s Blog focus on search engines and searching.

I also subscribe to political blogs and some of feeds from Seattle PI, NYTimes, . Easy to scan for most important / interesting and avoids all the different interfaces on the sites.

My whole list is at

Comment by Robert Eiffert — September 2, 2005 @ 7:27 pm

Yes - bloglines is great. I use it every day to follow my favorite blogs & keep up on other areas of interest. It will soon take over my life and I will never be seen again….. To see my full list of blogs - just go to my pseudo-blog at: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/JacquieHenry/
(I created the blog using bloglines - just as a way to teach myself the process. I don’t have any plans to update it - but it is there if I ever want to…)

But here is the issue that is making me CRAZY. I am SO upset that our content filter blocks it & our tech committe will not unblock it. When I first discovered Bloglines - I immediately fell in love with the power it gave me to follow my favorite blogs. I also fell in love with the ability to save articles for future reference. I wanted to teach the students - especially the seniors before going to college - how to set up folders for all their research projects. That way they can easily drop good articles into the folders as they ran across them. I also like www.savethis.com for saving ANY article I find on the web. So far, our content filter allows Savethis. That could change tomorrow. However, I really wanted to encourage the students to set up rss feeds if they have not already done so. So Bloglines is really necessary. I know that there are downloadable rss feed readers. Alas - our tech committee not only turned down my request to unblock Bloglines, but, because of budget cuts and dying computers, they have put a freeze on downloading ANY software. THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!!

Comment by Jacquie Henry — September 3, 2005 @ 7:22 pm

Consider these:
Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search, at http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/
Michael Stephen’s Tame the Web: Technology & Libraries, at http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/
Christopher Harris’ Infomancy, at http://www.schoolof.info/infomancy/
Fernette and Brock Eide’sNeurolearning blog, at http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/
Uglcoyote’si Endless Faculty Meeting, at http://wildwilliam.blogspot.com/

and — for a truly honest take on the realities of education: http://www.comics.com/comics/frazz/

Comment by Alice Yucht — September 9, 2005 @ 8:06 pm |

Back to school and bullies

It was our big “back-to-school” day here in the Mankato Area Public Schools. It’s always wonderful to see all the teachers back, refreshed and raring to go (for the most part.)

Part of our district’s tradition is to have a whole staff meeting in one of our high school auditoriums where the superintendent gives a short welcome message (always peppered with a few lame, but well received jokes), the school board president cheers us on, and usually a fairly lame “motivational” speaker makes us glad we as teachers are usually the ones boring others rather than the ones being bored. The worst “motivator” was a guy we got for $5 who said “Work hard or get fired.” Nah, just kidding, but there have been some doozies.

This year was a welcome change of pace. Nationally recognized speaker and educator, Barbara Coloroso, spoke eloquently, humorously, and movingly on bullying - what causes it and how to reduce it. She shared that nearly all students who were involved in school shootings had a common characteristic - they were bullied. Frightening. Anyway, if you get a chance to hear Ms Coloroso - do!

While Coloroso mention it in passing, I feel I need to also help warn my teachers that they need to be watching for signs of cyberbullying as well. With kids spending more time online than watching television (about 3 hours a day), the virtual world can also be a hostile environment.

I will certainly be directing my teachers and parents to Nancy Willard’s extensive work on cyberbullying. The educators’ and parents’ guides available on her website are excellent.

Welcome back to all teachers this fall. Please remember that there is a more important thing to worry about than a crashing computer - a safe, supportive and welcoming school environment for every kid.

Any good ideas for getting the cyberbullying message out to parents and educators?
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2 Comments »
Cyberbullying and too candid blogs have brought the issue of privacy and free speech to new review. Students have been suspended from school for online bullying–and nasty (libel or free speech?) remarks about faculty and administration. Are their rights being abridged if such remarks are made on home computers, not school computers?

In the recent  Time Magazine cover section on being 13 (8/5/05), there is a story on pages 52-55, “You Wanna take this Online?,” which includes the statistic that a Clemson University study found that in the preceding 2 months, 18% of middle schoolers had experienced cyberbullying. The article had a few tips for parents; can you suggest a few for teachers and librarians?

Thanks for bring this issue forward as school starts.

Comment by SaraKellyJohns — August 31, 2005 @ 6:57 am

Sara, good article in _Time_ August 6, 2005 issue. Thanks for recommending it.

This is the list of “What Parents Can Do About Cyberbullying” from “You Wanna Take This Online?”

1. LEARN Be sure you know how to use the Internet before you let your children go online.
2. BE AWARE What do your children do online? Do they have a Xanga, visit chat rooms or use instant messaging?
3. TALK A good ongoing dialogue with your children will help them feel comfortable telling you if something bad happens.
4. TEACH Instruct your children in good netiquette. What they wouldn’t do off-line, shouldn’t be done online either.
5. TRUST Snooping and secretly reading their e-mail are obstacles to openness. A balance of safety and trust allows teens the Net’s benefits while protecting them from most of its dangers.

Now I have to look up Xanga!

Comment by dougj — September 1, 2005 @ 2:36 pm

David Warlick’s Back to School Letter

I would encourage you to read David Warlick’s

Our Schools Are Leaking

Very thoughtful stuff.