Most of the blogs that I follow have been recommended to me by word of mouth or by one of the blogs I already read. Actually looking for blogs has been a little more difficult than I thought it would be.
I am not a big fan of any of the blog search tools that were provided on the Thing 11 page. Of the four, Google Blog Search was the easiest to use and the most helpful. I was able to find a few good blogs about special education, but it took a lot of wading through to find what I was really looking for. Once I got some practice at finding blogs, it was a lot easier to find relevant information.
I did not find the other very useful. If I were to rate the four ways to find RSS feeds from best to worst, the order that I would use is:
Google Blog Search
Technorati
Topix.net
Syndic8.com
If I wasn't so picky, I probably would have been able to find good blogs at Technorati and Topix.net. Syndic8.com was totally useless; I was confused the whole time I was searching. When I did think I found something useful, it was usually a dead link, which was incredibly frustrating.
I did finally find some good feeds to follow. My favorite finds were Unwrapping the Gifted, Irresistible Ideas for Play-based Learning, and Easy IEP Help.
Unwrapping the Gifted contains information on, you guessed it, gifted education. Gifted education is something that I find interesting, but I am not sure that I would ever want to teach gifted students. Hopefully this blog will give me a better idea about how gifted education works.
Irresistible Ideas for Play-based Learning is a website run by two early childhood education teachers from Australia. The project ideas on the site are a lot of fun, and the pictures of their students are adorable.
Easy IEP Help is an interesting combination of quirky news, personal insight, and useful information. The writing is wonderful, even if the posts on actual IEP help are few and far between.
While I'm glad that I took the time to look at these ways to find RSS feeds, I think I will probably still use the recommendations and word of mouth technique to find useful blogs and websites about education topics.
Mary, thank's for the mention and kind words about Easy IEP Help! I wish I had more time for content but your point about keeping posts on target about IEPs is spot on. I tend to drift off on tangents about learning and education but hopefully there's usually some helpful learning disability info and ideas sprinkled in with everything else. As I'm sure you found during your exploration, there's a lot out there to discover. I enjoyed your posts. Best of luck with everything!
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