Blogs and Blog Readers

I have been on Pinterest and Facebook for quiet some time. My twitter experience is expanding slowly. I like to see what other people in the world of education and some foodies have to say; so I do follow some blogs. The extent of my following is me signing up for notifications of their new blog posts that then get sent to my email account. I then take a quick peek and move it over to a folder in my email account to come back to later. Well the later never seems to happen and I have quite the large folder of blog emails that I most likely will never go back to. I have recently been introduced to feed reader. I had no idea what this was. Well, let me give you a little background in case you are like me and need some schooling. A feed reader is a RSS app, that curates your content from blogs and other sources automatically. RSS means really simple syndication. I visited an article that discussed several different variations on the feed readers. I choose to go with Feedly. I liked the layout of this reader the best. It reminded me a little bit of Pinterest because I can make boards to store articles that I want to return to at a later date. I like how I can organize my content by labeling the feeds. I have four feeds currently - edtech, library, prek, and education. I moved all the educational blogs I follow into Feedly and added a few new ones. I will discuss five of my favorites for you to check out.

• Educational Technology and Mobile Learning - A resource of educational web tools and mobile apps for teachers and educators. The blog has an endless amount of great resources for educational technology. I love the infographics that are shared with some of the posts. The site has information for google drive, chrome, ipads, books to read for teachers on edtech, and has an endless assortment of categories. Basically I think this site could almost answer any question about education technology with students.
• The Daring Librarian - Gwyneth Jones facilitates this blog. On her blog she has links to presentations that she does, her twitter, her library Edublog, Flickr, and Scoopit. I like how she posts information for students (summer reading list) and information for other educators/librarians. She critiques apps she uses and writes posts about Makerspaces that she creates to use in her library. She shares programming that she does in her Middle School Library. I really like her post on Social Media tips. 
• Watch. Connect. Read. - Mr. Schu creates this blog. He shares great books through his blog. He writes a books review with information from the author, like an interview. He also shares book trailers. His blog is entertaining. 
• School Library Journal - I choose this blog to share because it has so much information on libraries. Plus it has bonus blogs that are part of the SLJ Network. Since I do not subscribe to the journal the blog gives me access to great current happenings in the library world through SLJ. I like the recent blog post about teaching science through comics. I think kids especially reluctant readers and boys would be all over this idea. They also have an interesting post about including the fidget spinner craze into your classroom/library.
• The Measured Mom - Is a blog that shares tools for teaching Language Arts and Math to Prek-2nd grade as her focus. I love that she has free downloads to lots of her teaching supplements. I am so glad to add this blog to my Feedly. I probably have 100+ emails in my email blog folder that I can now move away from by using Feedly.

Tumblr is another new platform for me to experience. I did not know very much about it. I have heard about it, but was not sure really what its purpose was. So I did a little research. I found out simply that it is a microblog where bloggers can post text, links, quotes, audio clips, videos and network. I created an account this past spring so I could upload some programming lessons that I created to a Tumblr account for Sam Houston University Programming class LSSL 5368; so of course I follow this page. I searched "school library" to see how librarians are using the site. I found that they post lots of different information. Some post book reviews, some post programming, some post pictures of what is happening in their library and fun library quotes. I must warn you that some inappropriate content did appear when I searched "school library," a porn site was one of the possible blogs that popped up. So use caution with all social media and web-based sites in and out of your library. One never knows when the wrong information may pop-up even with what one might think is safe search terms. If you would like to visit my Tumblr please do. I am known as its-sarah-jones-love. My account is very limited on the content. I have posted only a few things, but I do like how tumbler is a cross between Twitter and Blogger.