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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Bloglines..Is it time to move on…

Today I read a post by Clay regarding the new image wall on Bloglines. I must admit even though I had seen it I had not looked at it very critically. Clay makes some very important points, especially in my case, since I work in a K-8 environment. I understand that we can not protect the kids from everything and I am not interested in censorship BUT I do believe we have to make responsible choices and model those for the students. ( It seems to me that the image wall just makes it too tempting and too easy for the students to do the wrong thing)We haven’t set up student Bloglines accounts but it was on the near horizon and all of the teachers are just getting started.

As my previous post indicates I have become a huge fan of Google productivity tools and so today I exported my Bloglines account to a Google reader! It was painless and now my notebook and my feeds all pop up on my homepage…How much easier can it be?

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9 comments:

CB said...

Update: Bloglines seems to have read my complaints in their forums and at least have set their "additional features" links in a collapsed, not expanded, default. This is a change that at least minimizes the chances students will discover the Image Wall.

2. Does Google Reader have the "keep new" feature that I find so valuable in Bloglines? I OPML'd my feeds to GR weeks ago, but just don't like the interface nearly as much as Bloglines (and Diigo does everything else better, esp. in its new 2.0 Beta).

C.

Unknown said...

I've noticed the image wall tag in my Bloglines account but had never clicked on it until you had mentioned it. Interesting...... Potentially scary. Bloglines is where all of my students RSS accounts are hosted..... Now I have some thinking to do.

Barbara Barreda K-8 Administrator, Tech integration advocate, Going 1:1 with netbooks said...

Clay forgive my ignorance but I do not know what GR is... As for the "keep new" feature it seems to... you have some options on how you want it to display..just check out the help section..it has lots of info...I just got it up and running a couple of hours ago.
It is very easy to import your feeds if you have them in OPML.

B.Davis said...

I was also just introduced to Google Reader- just when you thought the brains at Google couldn't think of anything else... they are truly taking over the world. Google Reader makes keeping up with multiple blogs a snap and really helps with efficiency- you can click the share feature and immediately send a good article or blog to your own blog to share- I sound like an advertisement, but when something works well it is worth talking about-

Brad

CB said...

GR = "Google Reader"

Really? You found a "keep new" in GR?

Again, I imported my Bloglines bookmarks there weeks ago, but didn't find the "keep new".

And b.davis, you really should check out Diigo (esp beta 2.0) for the "blog this," clipping, PLUS social bookmarking, annotating, AND fwding to del.icio.us etc.

Thanks Barbara~

Barbara Barreda K-8 Administrator, Tech integration advocate, Going 1:1 with netbooks said...

Yes, Gr (see I am catching on) can "keep new"..two ways 1) the easiest and most selective is to star the blog just click in the upper left corner or 2) change your preferences so that when you scroll the item is not marked as read and then at the bottom of each post you have the option to mark it as read.
I am truly hooked :)

Anonymous said...

I had an experience similar to Clay's within the first two minutes of opening the image wall. I wrote a complaint to them, explaining that I teach our students how to use Bloglines... I just checked for the image wall again, and it looks like it's down (time now is 19:55 GMT +2). Let's hope they backed down. Barbara, I was about to write a post on my blog arguing for edubloggers to pressure Bloglines rather than abandoning them, because they provide a great service (I really like the public feed option and being able to see subscribers and follow them to other public feeds) and the photo thing is extremely peripheral to what they're about. If they've really dropped the image wall, we should support them for having gained some sensitivity.

Barbara Barreda K-8 Administrator, Tech integration advocate, Going 1:1 with netbooks said...

Tom you make a good point and it does seem to be down. I am not sure right now what I will do because I also really like Google Reader and I think it is a little easier for the teachers at our school who are brand new to all of this..for now I have both.

Anonymous said...

Bloglines has just moved the image wall to a separate server where it can be blocked, specifically out of consideration of educators and librarians. See http://www.bloglines.com/about/news#133 for the details.