Blocked Bytes Week

Banned Books Week

Celebrating the Freedom to Read

September 27–October 4, 2008

Yeah. OK. Let's keep Harry on the shelves. Banned Books Week is a good thing.

But ALA (and ISTE), if we are truly committed to "Freedom to Read" what we really need is...

Blocked Bytes Week

Celebrating the Freedom from Filters

September 27–October 4, 2008

Americans need the freedom to read more than just books.

Don't underestimate the importance of the aggregator

The first things I do each time I turn on my computer (and several times during the day) are to open my email and then GoogleReader in my web browser. Increasingly, I'm opening GoogleReader first.

After reading posts by Miguel and Paul and reflecting on an inservice I did for Houston schools last week on Personal Learning Networks, I've had the epiphany that I've been neglecting the true unsung hero of Web 2.0 - the RSS feed aggregators. Either GoogleReader or Bloglines has become such a routine part of my online experience that I forget it is still an unused resource for a majority of educators. And one, if not mastered, will make it likely other Web 2.0 resources may well go unused.

First, Common Craft has two great introductions to aggregators: RSS in Plain English and the  just released, Google Reader in Plain English. I also have a short guide, "The top 10 things you should know about RSS feed aggregators" here. Those are the basics.

Blog reading was the first, and probably is still the most important, use of an RSS aggregator for most teachers. Given most educators' time constraints, finding updated information from lots of blogs in a single fast and convenient location is essential if blogs are to actually be used as a PLN resource on a regular basis. 'Nuff said.

It is only slowly that I am using GoogleReader (my aggregator of choice) to stay current on other information sources - to have the news find me instead of having to find the news. Yes, I am a slow learner. These are more recent additions:

• Mainstream media columnists. Whenever NYT's writers Paul Krugman, Maurreen Dowd, David Brooks, or Tom Friedman publish new columns, I now get them immediately. I am sure other columnists are available as well, but these are the ones I've sought out.
• delicious subscriptions. Whenever new bookmarks are added on selected tags, they appear in my aggregator. Cool.
  
• GoogleNews searches. (thanks to David Warlick for this suggestion). Articles on e-books, cyberbullying, and school libraries appear almost daily in my reader, most published in the mainstream press.
  
• "Reputation monitoring." I've added Technorati and delicious searches for "Doug Johnson" just to see which of my writings and blog posts are being bookmarked and commented upon. I know I must surprise some bloggers by saying "thanks for the mention" now and then in their own blogs. I also built a Google News search feed for "Mankato Area Public Schools." I need to do this yet in Technorati.
  

And I feel I am just scratching the surface here. What are some cool uses to which YOU have put your feed reader that other educators can use?

_________________________

Answer to a follow-up question:

Forgive me for asking, but I looked at the help,etc.  and I  couldn't figure it out.  I have a Google Reader account, and I wanted  to try one of the things you talked about in your blog--setting it up to get  Google news articles about certain topics.  I know I can subscribe to  Google News, but I understood from your post that you could set it up to  retrieve only articles on topics you were interested in.  I want to  show the debate team how to do this on their debate topics, but I wanted to  try it out myself for a couple of days first.  Can you give me some  instruction, please?

Sure....

1. Go to GoogleNews and do  the search on your term. 
   
2. When the results come  back, look in the left column of the screen. You will find links to RSS and  Atom. 
   
3. Click on either (I use  RSS), and a page will appear with a URL link that ends in “=rss” or “=atom”  
   
4. Copy and paste that link  into your GoogleReader “Add subscription” box.  
5. Manage the subscription like you would one to a blog.
   

Blame the user

When three people call you an ass, put on a bridle. Spanish proverb

I will be running close to the edge of my "Complain globally, praise locally" blogging guidelines in this post . But I am pretty angry.

Our state's Library Services Department wanted to collect data on school library programs using an online survey tool. Great!

We need a good set of data. We don't know for certain how many libraries, librarians, resources or computers we have in our fair state's schools - and whether those numbers are increasing or decreasing. It was embarrassing during legislative testimony to be asked for school library data and to not have such numbers available. The lack did not help our case.

So the intent itself was outstanding.

But the execution was terrible. Irrelevant questions, confusing questions, unreadable formatting, unreasonable tech requirements, malfunctioning website, and just an incredibly daunting length were all "features" of this survey. But school librarians in 42% of schools bravely made the attempt - including our district. Many of us tried working the department to make the survey more useful and meaningful - work with seemed to have been simply ignored.

But this is what put me over: a scolding letter from the department saying...

Please note that of the 383 respondents, only 80 reports were correctly answered. Every library has a dictionary because of the importance of understating the meaning of a word. It’s equally important to understand the intent of the question to obtain comparable data.

So let me understand this... Of the 42% of surveys completed, only 21% of those were completed "correctly?" That is a rate of less than 9% of possible survey returns that the state deems as "correct."

Uh, might the problem be with the survey and not with the 91% of us who either didn't complete the survey or got it wrong?

Creating a good survey is a task best left to professionals, not well-meaning amateurs. The validity of the data requires it.

There is a larger issue here as well: When any of us don't get the response we were anticipating (amount of use of a new resource, attendance at an in-service, number of readers or responses to our blog, etc.), it's very easy to "blame the user." Maybe we should be looking at what we are offering instead.

Good intentions do not make up for incompetence.

Original image source: www.bryantnielson.com/