Introduction
Blogs which comunicate authors' obsessions, the latest ideas in the single field that fascinates them, or the newest developments in a social issue are valuable sources of research information. Blogs also provide a medium for factual communication among groups (such as the onmason site we are using this semester for NCLC 203)
Push and Pull Technologies
The harvesting of information and ideas from blogs (and web sites) by your remembering to check the site regualrly is a legacy form of information retrieval. the digital equivalent of going to the libnrary shelves. The information you need is pulling you to it. New developments in ICTs allow us to shift to a different model, whereby information is pushed to us, onto our screens. Capitalizing on push technologies help us to maximize the work we can complete with the scarce time resources at our disposal. Here's a short video on how one push technology, RSS for blogs and news sites, works
How To...Use Google Reader
- Sign up for the Google Docs suite of tools (if you have not already done so)
- When Google Docs opens choose Reader
- Click the Add New Subscription button (top left)
- Paste the URL for our learning community blog into the box and click Add
- Postings from our blog should appear in the main window to the right
- Repeat for as many blogs and new sites as you want to track for academic work, your own informal learning, and collaboration