My RSS Reader Page

I created an RSS reader page through Netvibes for this class. (see screenshot above)

One blog I subscribed to is called Collecting Children’s Books.  It is mainly opinions and ideas written by a man who used to work in a school library and now in the children’s section of a university library.  I find that he has interesting things to say and sometimes points out interesting current events.  I commented on a blog post of his from October 17th.  The author posted pictures of scarecrows dressed as storybook characters for Halloween.  I thought this would be such a fun idea to incorporate into a childrens' library!  I also commented on his post from November 7^th.  I was happy to see that I am not the only one skeptical of the idea of replacing paper books with technology for our children.  There is something about having an actual book in your hand and creating the voices and movement in your head that technology completely takes away. 

Another blog I subscribed to is called the Joys of Children’s Literature.  I like it because it has much shorter blog posts and many of them include topics about technology and education.  There was one post about using author’s blogs to teach, one about using voice threads, and another about using Skype.

One of the main things I have learned from viewing RSS feeds and searching for RSS feeds is that there are not a lot of news sites or blogs related to childrens' libraries or childrens' literature. 

I really like the feed I found for Activated Stories, and hope that if I keep up with it, I can find some useful ones to play aloud in the library.   It is not updated often (every few months) but might turn out to be useful. 

I am also finding a few good ideas in blogs that will be useful in the library or for my family.  Some people blog about books they like or remember, and it gives me ideas about books I can read to my kids at school. I was really excited to find (on School Library Monthly blog) a website that I knew nothing about- bookpig.com.  It is a site like Netflix, but for children’s books.  You can pay to have books shipped to your house, keep them until you’re ready to return them, and then send them back for more.  It starts at only $8 a month.  I know that it seems a little silly since libraries are free, but it going to a library takes time and they don’t always have the books kids want.  This seems like a great option for busy parents who want to keep their kids reading without always buying the books or going to the library. It may also turn out to be useful for me at school if I find that there are a lot of books I want to read with my students that my library does not have. 

Having the RSS sure does make it easier to access everything in one place, as well as view a summary before I spend time reading and article or blog that may not be useful to me.