One of the problems with the plethora of bloggers out there is that we’re literally all over the place. If you happen to stumble on one of our blog posts, you can become a subscriber. That works out nicely.
Of course, there are utilities like Google’s Blog Search that lets you perform a search and happen upon a new blog to read in that fashion. I suspect that most people don’t use features like that or places like Technorati to find new readings.
Instead, I think there’s probably a great deal of word of mouth exchange of links, or you might find a website which features an ongoing blog to support the cause of the website, or you might be intrigued by a post notice on Plurk or Twitter and wander over out of curiosity. You might also stumble into new readings by checking out the blog roll of your favourite blog. This is a location where your favourite author claims that she / he follows these other blogs.
Once identified, you’ll put them in your RSS Reader in the Flock browser or Google Reader or Netvibes or … Right?
More and more I’m finding that the answer to this is not really. Everyone has great plans to set up a reader and follow but then life gets in the way.
There are a couple of great websites that collect this information for you. Two of them, PopUrls and Alltop are actually start tabs for my browsers. These are collections that provide mass appeal to readers. There’s even a “Canadian” collection on Alltop.
But, what about drilling down to something specific like “Ontario Educators’ Blogs”? Perhaps too fine a drill for the big world, but still of interest to those of us in the province. There is an alternative. It’s hosted by ECOO and called Commun-it.
Commun-it is free for the joining and a place for educators to join special interest groups and you can even host your blog there. There is an added benefit. If you wish to keep your blog on your present host (like I do at WordPress), then you can ask to have your blog scraped regularly and posted on the Community page. That gives you the freedom to maintain your identity but also to have your thoughts appear amidst those of other Ontario bloggers.
That is a good thing. It allows us to create our own community of educational blog resources with hopefully a decided Ontario slant. Lets make it easier for people to read quality Ontario postings.
I would call upon all Ontario educational bloggers to take advantage of this opportunity.
A screencast showing how to do this, created by Tim Hawes, is located here.
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