Blog Club

Time constraints are often the chief factor in hindering the uptake of new tools and technologies.  This may be especially true when it comes to encouraging people to read a variety of blogs.  We all read blog posts but perhaps only a few really resonate with us.  I've been tossing around the idea of a blog club. Club members could be in the same school, district or any other geographical configuration.  Here's how it might work:

Each person agrees to read a given number of blogs each week.  Start small with 1 - 5. When they come across a gem they could share it with the rest of the group.  Sharing options could include anything from email to Google Docs, Twitter and Posterous but a simple way would be to use the reader share function in Google Reader.  Other feed aggregators may have something similar.

Here's a sample that was shared in my reader.  Notice the options to star, share, share with a note, email, and add tags.  These options appear at the bottom of all reader items.  Tagging is a quick way to let the others know what the post is about.

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Another option is to share using a bookmarklet placed in your browser's bookmark toolbar.  The Official Google Reader Blog explains how to do that here.  This is handy when you are browsing outside your reader and come across a great article.

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I talked about using Twitter and Posterous in a previous post.  It may be helpful to use a group hashtag if you're using Twitter to make the posts easier to find.   With Posterous you simply email the URL for any page to your Posterous account.  Setting up a group account is easy.  All members would then email using post@[the name of your posterous page].posterous.com. Here's the example from our group page.

This way of sharing the load gives participants a taste of many blogs without the burden of handling a large number of feeds in a reader.

Reasons to RSS

Next week our district is going to introduce RSS feeds to a large number of teachers. We've booked four labs at one of the high schools and will divide the group for smaller hands-on sessions.

I started the ball rolling by tweeting out a request asking how/why people use RSS feeds and got the following replies:



To this I would add:
-Use news feeds to track current events.
-Use delicious feeds to have bookmarks with specific tags sent to you.
-Subscribe to photo feeds from flickr.
-And this comprehensive list - 100 Cool Things You Can do With RSS (NB not all of these suggestions may be suitable for school use.)

Some of the online resources we've found:

Commoncraft: RSS in Plain English
Commoncraft: Google Reader in Plain English

Google Reader for Beginners

We've come up with a list of suggested feeds in a variety of subject areas and grade levels.

And of course Will Richardson's definitive RSS Guide is posted on his blog.

Some of the better known feed aggregators are Google Reader, Netvibes and Pageflakes.

Why are we doing this? Our hope is to set teachers up with some good professional reading over the summer when they will have time to ponder and play.

Do you have blogs you would recommend? I'd be happy to add them to our list. Please add a comment.