Blogging and Feed Readers, Oh My!

 

Welcome Readers!!

Blogging is a new experience for me, so join me on my journey. I wasn’t even sure where to begin or how to keep up with my life, writing blog entries, or even following other bloggers. Thankfully, I was pointed in the right direction with the introduction to feed readers.  A feed reader is basically a program that gathers and displays web feeds from various websites in one place, thus telling up when things are updated instead of you having to find each page daily to see if there is anything new, thus saving you ample time.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I have not found any feed reader to be perfect or meet my expectations either, but then again I wasn’t sure what exactly I was looking for. I went into my search with one expectation: easy to use! Now, with that said, there are some takeaways I want to share with you. If you are looking at finding your own way to keep up with the world of Blogs before you even begin to look at feed readers decide what is important to you, so you have a checklist of expectations, maybe have more than my one. You live, you learn!

Let me begin with my feed reader of choice. I am a huge Pinterest fan, so when I saw Bloglovin’ had a Pinterest like feel, this made it a contender in my search. Bloglovin’ besides having a name that reminds me of my favorite movie Grease, thinks of the song, “Summer Lovin’.” Now that you have that song stuck in your head….besides visual similarities to Pinterest, it was easy to follow new blogs and it also track other hobbies you may have.  I enjoy cooking and baking, so anything recipe or kitchen gadget related sparks my interest. Plus, now I have another place to search for new recipes and keep them handy for future reference.  I also enjoy motivational quotes and anything I can find to help my teachers' mental health, especially after the year we are faced with. Bloglovin’ was great for this as it allows you the ability to create different collections/folders. This was great to fit the many hats of educators as well as businesses and students. This feed reader also lets you link your social media accounts: Twitter, Google, Facebook, Pinterest, to their site so everything is followed in one place, great quality for people on the go!

There are some downfalls, which some could just be lack of user knowledge. I did not like the fact that I had to sign up for the free account and pick something to follow before I could even look around as to what to expect. However, I found this to also be the case for a number of other feed reader sites I tried. The search bar is also sketchy. When I try to search a topic of interest, I have to rephrase what I want multiple times using variations of the word before I get any results. It reminds me of a research paper or assigning keywords when cataloging.  Once I got the hang of how the search engine worked it wasn’t so bad, but not as simple as a google search. Another thing I just realized is when I go to my followings there is no way to know if anything has been updated, it seems more like a place to store information in an orderly manner. Hopefully, it is only because I don’t know enough about how to work Bloglovin’ just yet.

Now, Bloglovin’ may not be for everyone. I did try a few others, but my experience was short-lived. I ended up signing up for four different feed readers because many of them wouldn’t let me preview all aspects of what was available if at all. Once I signed up I was able to navigate and get a better feeling. At first, I tried,  The Old Reader. This seemed like a tried and true method from the description, but I found it was not user friendly, especially for someone who didn’t even know what they were looking at, plus they were only available on the web, there was no app option. I then attempted NewsBlur as I wanted help filtering out the unwanted stuff, I thought of it like filtering out my email. However I met Ted, I think that is what his name was, a robot that was helping set up my account. He wanted me to answer questions to help weed out what I didn’t want. For a newbie that was too hard for me, as I didn’t and still don’t know exactly what I am looking for in a  feed reader, so I didn’t want to narrow myself down so quickly.  

As I begin to dig more into this whole blogging things, I want to highlight some blogs I do follow in case you are looking for more inspiration in your blogging world:

One great blogger to follow that I have found is Gwyneth Jones, The Daring Librarian. She can be found on Twitter @GwynethJones or her blog at: https://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/. She sounds like a fantastic librarian from just the first few posts I have read. Helpful and ready to share her ideas with others! I loved her blog from the start. It gives you a short description of what the blog is about and you can pick if you want to continue reading that particular post or move on to another post. I haven’t seen that on any other blog before. A great way to pick and choose what to read. However, to be honest I read all that I saw at first glance. Gwyneth has a sassy, no-nonsense way of writing, it was refreshing to read a blog that was honest, “I am sorry I can’t troubleshoot for you. Mostly because I am lazy.” She poured her heart into providing resources and sharing her knowledge but she isn’t going to help others further than giving them a playbook, which I find admirable. One drawback is some of her posts are specific to her campus or school district but I still found them enjoyable to read and learn from how another librarian or even district runs their library program.  

A second blog that caught my attention was Mrs. J in the library. I first liked the play on words it had me thinking about the game Clue. Mrs. J in the library with the candlestick. Not what happened but it got my attention! This blog is organized and searchable by topic which is a win in my book! Searchable blogs are great for getting ideas on a certain aspect in the library or technology, click the keywords and it will bring you to all the posts about that topic. Mrs. J also has a page on TPT, she links her merchandise to her blog posts as well. This can be distracting, but I don’t blame her for self-promotion. I also chose to follow Mrs. J because she focuses on lower elementary. Since I am in a building of PK and K students I wanted someone who may be someone I can share ideas with and understand the neediness of 4-5-year-olds. If this blog sounds interesting to you, you can follow Mrs. J here: https://mrsjinthelibrary.com/blog/.

Another interesting blog with a unique point of view is Musings About Librarianship. This blog written by Aaron Tay takes a quite different approach from my previous blog recommendations. Mr. Tay is more focused on the back end of librarianship, the research, technology, Boolean Queries, and tips and tricks. Though his blog is written in a more professional manner, his personality still shines, he adds little glimmers of his life throughout his posts making him feel like an acquaintance. Mr. Tay is writing out of Singapore, it is interesting to see how things work differently there. His more recent posts deal with COVID in Singapore and how the library has shifted with their soft lockdown, or “circuit breaker” as they call it. His blog is very educational but easy to follow, it doesn’t feel like you are reading a textbook. You can follow him using the link: http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/.

Another blog I started to follow is Library Grits. Upon initial inspection I found Dianne McKenzie’s writing hooked me immediately. I was hooked her first post before I even knew if I liked the general concept of the blog.  I had to keep reading and find out what had happened when she made a simple comment on Facebook. Her experience though frightful, happens more than we care to admit. I am overly cautious at how I word things on public Facebook posts because your audience doesn’t know you and you don’t know how they will respond. I believe she did the noble thing standing up for the unknown female and saying how dangerous it was to just throw out information about a strange on a public forum like that. Without knowing background information on the poster or their relationship or lack thereof. Anyways, I appreciate her spinning her experience into a lesson on Cyber Bullying. This is a topic that is never taught enough. It is so easy for anyone behind a screen to bully and belittle others. If you would like to follow Dianne or learn more about the post I am referring to you can find it here:  http://librarygrits.blogspot.com/.

I am starting to sense a pattern for what types of blogs I am looking for, what interests me, and what is something I will want to continue to get updates on. I began following Ms. O Reads Books at http://www.msoreadsbooks.com/. The design layout is exceptional but her posts are REAL! Her most recent post that hooked me before I even took a deeper look was her splurge on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT). I know, I know, this is NOT the best way to get your teaching material, but Ms. O is able to provide great evidence that while she spent a lot of unnecessary money, to her it was necessary. For this school year our lives are already stressful with COVID, plus add in managing your health while back on campus, or managing your life while teaching remotely trying to take care of your own kids who are also learning virtually is  A LOT on anyone’s plate! Sometimes, a rescue is needed! Remember, our mental health and wellbeing is important too. Like Ms. O says, “this is a just a headstart and now I can tweak until my heart is content.” Looking through her older posts her posts have slowed down in recent years, but her content is still relevant from previous years.

I hope I have helped clear up any confusion you had or at least made you laugh at my own learning process. Remember this, teaching is a marathon, not a sprint. We pick up ideas along the way, we learn through various improvements to technology and new curriculum, and though our goals may keep changing as we grow and learn. The reason we are running this marathon remains the same. We do what is best to give our students the best we have for the betterment of them!

Readers, what feed reader do you use, if any?

*I am also on Tumblr, reach out to me to make connections! https://www.tumblr.com/blog/mrsmeierreads