Thing 9

With all the blogs out there, I was pleased to know that there are specific search engines for them. My favorites were Bloglines and Technorati. I liked how Bloglines had a preview of each post when you hovered over it, allowed you to e-mail it, and showed you how many bloglines members followed the feed, all on one page. Technorati was the most visually appealing and seems to be the foremost expert on blogs. Every time I see reviews of blogs or newspapers writing about blogs, Technorati's name comes up.

Besides Superglu, which didn't have a working link or show up when I typed it in the address bar, Syndic8 was the most confusing to me. I felt like the homepage was too overwhelming and not visually appealing. It took forever to search and what came up was not always relevant.

One useful feed that I found is Free Technology for Teachers. It discusses even more Web 2.0 technology to be used in the classroom. There are pictures and examples of everything discussed so you get more of an idea how to use it at school. Another feed I added to my reader was Classroom Solutions by Scholastic. I use Scholastic to order books and occasionally print worksheets, but never knew there was a blog dedicated to exciting ways to get kids involved in learning! Classroom Solutions is split up into grade level articles, focusing on technology and free events that students can participate in. This is definitely a site I am going to access at school and share with my co-workers!