How do you find good blog content “out there?” The blogosphere is a big place and some of it is filled with stuff we wouldn’t want to read or look at. HOW do you find people writing about content that interests us or is valuable to us as educators? How do you find information that we as educators want and NEED to read?
Good question
I attempt to answer this question in this and subsequent post(s). It’s not hard to find valuable, reliable content from valuable, experienced educators and peers…but its not simple either. Technorati is blocked by the district’s firewall…so we have to find other ways to search for blog content. The great thing - once you find a blog that is interesting and/or valuable as a resource for information, you can locate other blogs by “mining” the sidebar of the blogs you like and trust.
MINING THE SIDEBAR — what does this mean?
- Find a blog you like and trust…(take this blog for instance)
- Look at the blog’s sidebar either to the left or right of the main post area
- Usually the blog’s owner will have a list of blogs he/she likes to read
- Bingo! Mine THEIR blogroll for other blogs that are intersting and valuable to read
The first step is to find a decent blog search engine. With Technorati not available, we’ll have to find other alternatives.
- Google Blog Search seems like a good place to go. All things “Google” are great, right? Google Blog Search is good, but not great. I find that it doesn’t produce many “hits” and a lot of its search results are really blogs at all. But it IS a start.
- Feedster is another search engine that I like. By its very name, you can tell that it’s not just searching for blogs. It is searching for anything with an RSS feed. But even Technorati will search for videos, images, and blogs, etc. I find that right now, it produces more results that Google Blog Search.
- Blogdigger is cool in that it has a feature that allows you to search for local blogs.
- IceRocket Blog Search has an interesting advanced search feature.
Second, go to one of these search engines and search for a term that is of interest or value to you either professional or personally.
- I went to Google Blog Search and searched for the term EdTech.
- Now take a deep breath, because within the district’s firewall, many of the sites you are going to try and view will be blocked by the firewall. Of course you can always do this search at home. But just keep looking…not all blogs are blocked by the firewall.
- Once you find a blog post you can view, see if you locate the blog’s “About Me” page…or something similar. {Who is this person? What is their role/job in relation to the topic you are interested in?}
- How long has he/she been blogging? How often does he/she blog? And most importantly, when was the last blog post?
- What is the blog’s content about? You can usually find an archive section in the sidebar; or you can go to the blog’s homepage and just start browsing the posts chronologically.
- If everything seems favorable…hopefully this blogger will have a blogroll or list of other blogs he/she likes to read.
- Click on these links and see if you too will like them…but don’t forget to bookmark or save THIS blog’s URL before you lose it.
That’s really it. Not hard…but not simple either. So what do you do if the blog you like doesn’t have a blogroll? There are a couple of options before giving up hope.
- You can read some of the blog’s comments. Often times, the person commenting will have a link to their own blog.
- Read some of the posts of blog and see if within the post’s contents, it doesn’t refer to blogs it has visited and liked.
- If neither prove fruitful, at least you have found ONE blog you like and find valuable.
