Starting a blog, following blogs, RSS, and comments

It's been one day since I started my blog. I've been pleased to share it with my colleagues in my 21st Century Skills course and read their comments here and also in our class forums. I'm sure I'll also be very excited when I get a comment from a non-classmate, since it will mean that others are reading my blog too!

It's been fun reading my colleagues' blogs, subscribing to them, and commenting on them. I've developed a personal connection with these people as I've been getting to know them and working with them over the past few weeks and I'm looking forward to following their blogs as the next school year starts and we all start to integrate some of the technologies we've been exploring into our classrooms.

In addition to staring my own blog and reading my colleagues', I have started using GoogleReader to help me manage the blogs I'm following. GoogleReader is a free application which manages my blog "subscriptions" and lets me know when a blog I'm following has been updated. I'm thankful for an "alert" system like this. Now I don't have to visit each blog individually to discover new posts. Anything that saves time and helps manage all the information out there is a great tool.

I'm also using GoogleReader and Google Blogsearch to help me find other professional/educational blogs to follow. There are so many blogs out there. Yesterday I lost track of time searching until my stomach told me it was way past lunch time! I found a few I wanted to follow and some I even commented on yesterday including:

Free Technology for Teachers
This blog reviews free technology and suggests use for each tool in the classroom. I found the entry on Podsafe audio very interesting as I am struggling to learn about licenses, Creative Commons, and were to find music and visuals for multimedia projects. I appreciated the entry and the comments and posted my own comment thanking the writers and readers for their suggestions and asking if anyone had an essay lesson or outline for teaching students about copyright. (To go directly to the Podsafe entry and comments, click here.) I was a bit nervous because my comment had to be "approved," but it was and I hope to get some answers to my question/comments on my comment and am also looking forward to exploring some of the resources mentioned on the site.

Linda Zins-Adam's Blog
This blog is created by German Teacher, Linda Zins-Adams. She blogs in German and her students write comments. She also has a blog page for each course she teaches and one which she and her students use to get to know their exchange partners in Germany. I commented on her most recent post and will definitely be using this blog as a model and inspiration for what I can do with my own students. (To see my comment, click here.)

Arnaba's Weblog
This blog is in German and is a teacher's collection of resources for Web 2.0 and teaching German as a foreign language. The most recent entry includes downloads for teaching about online social networks. I subscribed to the feed and am anxious to go through the past posts to explore the other resources.

DaF-Blog
This is another blog in German that features ideas, resources, and comments about teaching German as a foreign language. One post that caught my attention was about using 5 frame stories from Flickr collections to help students practice their oral speaking/storytelling skills.

100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers
This list was posted on a blog in Classroom 2.0, a community for teachers seeking to integrate Web 2.0 skills into their classrooms. This list is organized by subject and can be a huge timesaver.

I'm still a blog-newbie and have lots to learn, but the exploring I've done so far has been both informational and fun!