Blogs and Blog Readers

In this blog I will discuss my new found excitement about blog readers and I will also highlight some of my favorite blogs. Call me old school, but I had not looked into blog readers until recently. In order to keep up with my favorite blogs I would visit their sites as often as I could, but to be honest I really needed a place to keep them all together. Blog readers do that for you! It is so much easier and it saves time to have all your blog feeds in on place. All you do have to do is login to your blog reader of choice and like magic all your favorite blogs are there. Some of the popular blog readers out there are Bloglovin’, Feedly, Bloglines, News Blur, Digg Reader, and Newsvibe. After reading reviews and looking at the sites myself I decided to use Feedly. It was so easy to sign up for Feedly because you can use your Google account to sign in. So if you already own a Google account Feedly is a good choice. I loved that it was linked to Google because several of my accounts such as YouTube and my blog are linked to my Google account so I do not have to worry about having to memorize so many passwords. I also selected Feedly because as I was looking at the sites before selecting one, Feedly offered a tutorial with tips on how to use their blog reader. I loved this feature because as a new user I want to see how to use the service.

After choosing my blog reader I added my favorite blogs. All of the blogs I follow are either school libraries, leaders in school libraries, or sites that will help improve school libraries and/or librarians. One of the blogs I follow is The Nerdy Book Club. The Nerdy Book Club features book reviews. The bloggers on this site focus on children and young adult books. They also post editorials about their experiences with reading; they share their love of reading, and their experiences teaching reading. I like this blog because the bloggers are a group of book lovers who have their own blogs, but have joined together to share their book reviews on this particular site. I love this because I do not have to visit several sites I can find several awesome bloggers here! I also like this blog because they blog about young adult books and I want to be a middle school librarian so I need to stay up to date with the latest books for this age group.Check out The Nerdy Book Club at https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/.

The next blog on my list of favorites is The Unquiet Librarian. The Unquiet Librarian is none other than Buffy Hamilton who is very well known in the world of school libraries and is regarded as an educational technology leader. This blog posts about what is going on at Hamilton’s school library as well as important things going on in the world of librarianship. I follow this blog because I like to see what is going on in school libraries so I can get ideas for my future library. I love that when she posts about something new that is going on at her library she also includes pictures and we are able to see students who are engaged or we get to see the work created by the students. You can find The Unquiet Librarian at https://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/.

Another blog that I follow is The Daring Librarian. The Daring Librarian is Gwyneth Jones who is also very well known to librarians and technology lovers. In her blog she posts about her daily experiences as a librarian, links to past presentations that she has delivered as a guest speaker, her school library blog, and advice and motivation for librarians. I really like that she motivates librarians to try new technology or new approaches in order to meet the needs of the students. She advises us to try new things until we find something that we like and that works. I enjoy following this blog because Jones has a link to her school library blog which I love to get ideas from. I also like this blog because she is a leader in technology and I can learn a lot from her. Follow The Daring Librarian at http://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/.

Another one of my favorite blogs is The Mighty Little Librarian. The Mighty Little Librarian is run by Tiffany Whitehead who is the librarian at Central Middle School in Baton Rouge. She posts about her activities and experiences as a middle school librarian. She also posts helpful ideas that have worked for her in her library. For example, she posted a video that she made with her 7th and 8th grade students that helped explain the library procedures to the 6th grade students. I thought this was an awesome way to incorporate students into her lesson. Instead of having to explain the procedures herself to students over and over this video was a helpful tool, especially because she runs the library on her own without any helpers at a campus of about a 1,000 students. The reason I follow this blog is because I can get tips from an actual middle school librarian. Getting tips from a middle school librarian is very important to me because I am looking for a middle school librarian position. The Mighty Little Librarian can be found at http://www.mightylittlelibrarian.com/.

The final blog I want to highlight is School Library Displays. I loved this blog because let us be honest we have all been guilty of logging on to Pinterest to get ideas for library displays and bulletin board ideas. Well this blog gives you creative ideas and themes for library displays. The best part is you can view everything without having to log in because I will be honest a lot of times when I go to Pinterest in search of ideas I forget my log in information so I can’t view anything and it is really frustrating! The School Library Displays blog can be found at http://schoollibrarydisplays.blogspot.com/.

Before I end my blog I want to touch upon Tumblr. As I searched through Tumblr to see how school librarians are using it I found that school librarians are creating pages to promote activities at their libraries. This is great because they give students another way to stay in touch with their school library. Librarians are also using Tumblr to post articles that deal with reading and libraries. Finally some school librarians are using Tumblr to post book reviews. Whether you like using blogs, blog readers, or sites like Tumblr the reality is that social media is here to stay. The best way to see what sites work best for you and your needs the best advice I can give is to try several out. Once you try several sites you will find what works best. As I continue to embrace technology and find what works best for me I have created a Tumblr account. Follow me on Tumblr at http://dgonzalezshsu.tumblr.com/.