Comments on: Reading Ideas Instead of People, Take 22

By: Larry Wilkner

Larry Wilkner — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:38:39 +0000

FYI…I became aware of your blog and read this post as a result of Google Reader’s recommendations. I have added your feed to my Reader.

By: robertogreco

robertogreco — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:57:23 +0000

Read this post from Jason Kottke. He does a good job explaining his system for grouping and reading feeds.

By: Darren Kuropatwa

Darren Kuropatwa — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:10:51 +0000

Hey Will, I like this idea of subscribing to ideas rather than people. After all, it’s the constant ebb and flow and evolving nature of new ideas about teaching and learning that first drew me to blogging.

But the thought occurred to me: If we subscribe to a set of ideas, then how do we tap in to new ideas as they emerge?

Not to throw cold water on this practice before it’s had a chance at exploring life in the light for while but if you do go ahead and do this I’d be fascinated to hear about your experience vis a vis being exposed to new ideas this way rather the the “old” way.

Cheers!

By: Karl Fisch

Karl Fisch — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:20:23 +0000

Also, if you click on Discover (next to Add Subscription on the Home page, or on the Browse tab when looking at recommendations), you can search for feeds. When the search comes up, it tells you the average posts per week. Not very efficient for lots of feeds, but works if you just want to know about a couple.

By: Clarence Fisher

Clarence Fisher — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:54:36 +0000

This is exactly the mode that I find myself in lately. I have been far too busy in class in our collaboration with LA, with traveling 4 weeks in a row, and now with report cards / interviews to post much to my blog lately. It also doesnt help that my internet service at home has been up and down for several weeks now which is where I usually do my writing. Too many competing priorities.

By: robertogreco

robertogreco — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:01:52 +0000

A few more notes…

The trends page also provides some charts for the number of items you have read for each of the last thirty days, what time of day they were read, and which day of the week.

Alan’s method of reading folders not feeds has been working well for me for a while now. I’ve also created a folder/tag named “zxtra” where I put some of those feeds with a high number of posts per day. Most of the time I just end up marking all items as read without even looking at them, but occasionally I’ll flip through them rapidly to get an idea what they are covering. The “zxtra” title is not so important now that Google Reader allows you to drag feeds and folders in whatever order you want, but before (with the strict alphabetizing) it kept the folder at the bottom.

By: robertogreco

robertogreco — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:49:58 +0000

“I wonder if there is a way to analyze the blogs that I am currently subscribed to in terms of posts per week.”

Have you seen the “trends” section of Google Reader? Find it near the upper left of the reader page. It provides “reading trends” for the number and percentage of items you have read for up to your top 40 feeds. It also provides “subscription trends” which are the number of posts per day (to the tenths) and the percentage of those you have read for up to the top 40 most active of your subscriptions.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:32:06 +0000

I wrote about this topic a month or so ago, however, not as eloquently as you.

I’ve been filtering out many of blogs that I do not read and slowly adding tag and search feeds that are relevant to what I am doing. So far, so good.

Thanks for affirming I’m not crazy.

By: Will Richardson

Will Richardson — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:56:29 +0000

@alan Doh! Never thought of that, even though it’s been right there all of the time. Thanks.

By: Alan Levine

Alan Levine — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:48:25 +0000

Thanks for the recommender tip, though it was not exactly obvious where it was inside GR.

My feed reading has gotten less religious and regular than years back, but is still essential. The difference now is the mode of browsing; before I would go from feed to feed, and check one person’s stream. Now I use GR to browse by my folder tags, so its more of a stream of multiple authors.

By: Cyndi Danner-Kuhn

Cyndi Danner-Kuhn — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:39:01 +0000

I am with you, in fact I am spend so much time reading others (like now) that I have not be very diligent at posting to my own blog. I have good intentions, but that seems to be as far as I get most weeks, good intentions. And Twitter is truly becoming a side trip most days. I seem to be absorbed in checking out the resources of folks I follow and trying to learn them and then decide if they are something I need to expose my pre-service teachers to in class. Just feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of it at the end of the semester.