Thing #9

It has always interested me to ponder the vastness of the WWW. This exercise gave me a whole new view of all the blogs that are out there. I really enjoyed the article on "The Cool Cat Teacher Blog."

I searched for new blogs that are out of the "normal standard" of what I usually choose to read. I figured out how to find the RSS orange box and add the feed to my list on my home page very easily. I enjoyed the "edublogs award winners." The search tool I found the easiest to use was the Google blog search. The one called Syndic8 was rather confusing to me. I thought I had to click too many pages to get to the page I wanted to see. I did some search for recipes and found some new recipe sites. I also found some interesting sites about things happening at my Alma Mater. I was a bit overwhelmed with all the information. I could have continued searching on and on!

Thing #8

I have heard of RSS feeds as well as seen the little orange box all over the Internet. I never knew how to use it though. Now that I know what it is and how to use it, I think it is great! I like the ease of adding new subscriptions, the organization I can have by making folders, and the time it saves me from clicking through my favorites listings.

I've already been able to make use of this feature in my personal life. I have made iGoogle my new homepage and added the reader to it through my main Gmail account. It is so helpful to have the updates show right there rather than check through my favorites list multiple times throughout the day.

This technology would be helpful for libraries as a research tool. It is much more convenient to have the news feeds come in as they're updated than to try to scroll through tons of web pages looking for new information.