RSS Feeds, Social Bookmarks, and Book Sites, oh my!

In our class this week, we investigated different RSS feed aggregators. I use Feedly to follow writing blogs (I hung on to Google Reader until about June 30th, the day before it closed!). I like the look of Feedly, especially on my iPad. I get overwhelmed with Feedly, but that's my own fault; I'll go two weeks without it and I'll have 100 feeds to catch up on! And I have a hard time skipping any. I'm working on it.

For my assignment, I looked into Bloglovin. It was simple to sign up, and adding blogs to follow was straightforward and user friendly. You can find your own blogs to add, or search through Bloglovin's categories. Once I'd chosen my three blogs to follow, Bloglovin made suggestions based on each blog. The suggestions were spot on, and faster than looking up blogs on a search engine. The reader part is pretty much the same as Feedly's. The page shows previews of the blog post, just like Feedly does. The post turns gray, or de-highlights, in the same way as well. Overall, I found Bloglovin easy to use.

The most interesting part of the assignment for me was which blogs I picked to try on Bloglovin. I chose to follow all elementary librarians' blogs. (It may have been a reaction to an observation I had this week at a high school, which made me really miss the warm and fuzzies of elementary school!) I liked Elementary Librarian, Mrs. Lodge's Library, and The Centered School Librarian. This content can be the beginning of my professional development blog following. I'll probably end up putting it on Feedly, though; I don't think I can handle more places to check!

I also checked out social bookmarking sites. I have to admit, social bookmarking was hard for me to understand. I investigated Delicious and Diigo and really liked the research-y aspect of Diigo. And, just like my obsession with school supplies, I was immediately booked on color highlighting and sticky notes! Diigo is already set up on my toolbar. See my Diigo.

Finally, I checked out Shelfari, Library Thing, and Goodreads I'm a longtime Goodreads member, and although Shelfari and Library Thing definitely have their advantages (free books to preview on Library Thing, good teacher links on Shelfari, etc.), I'm sticking with Goodreads because it's the largest and I can find many of my friends there. It's fun to see what everyone's reading.

Find me on Goodreads (My books) so I know what you're reading too!