The scoop on Feed Reader!

This  day and age, many professionals in a variety of careers, rely on the web and apps to stay up to date with trends, news, and a number of other hot topics in the world today.  Apps like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter are just a few popular apps that attract people on a daily basis.  But what I have found is that as great as these apps are, they are not as resourceful and convenient to navigate throughout my busy day.

 I recently came across a remarkable new app that allows me to combine my love for reading, education, trends and politics into one tool that will allow me to enjoy all my favorite websites and blogs in one easy to use location.  Feed readers are designed to incorporate a variety of topics, websites and blogs ready at your fingertips to accommodate our busy lifestyle.  With feed reads, I am able to access all of favorite websites, apps and blogs combined into one location instead of having to have several different tabs and windows open whether it be on my laptop or on my mobile device. 

When I came across this app, I was amazed and so excited that I could not keep this discovery to myself!  I thought to myself, ¨Amber you are not the only busy individual who searches for ways to make your life easier!" See I work not only as a 3rd grade teacher, but every evening I leave my school job and head to my second job in an office at a dealership and on top of that I am caring for my sick father and a full time grad student.  Now, I am saying all of this to show you that I do not have time to search leisurely through tons of different ads, websites, apps.  I need something that will be easily accessible and a tool that I can turn for quick and easy results.  When I came across feed reader, I wanted to share my findings and thoughts of which feed readers I have found to be the best and which feed readers I personally recommend.

The first feed reader that I found to be very beneficial and easy to access was Feeder.  Feeder is a very similar tool to the apps that are used everyday by most people.  Within this feed reader, users will find that Feeder is very similar to the apps that they currently are using.  I found this to be a big reason for choosing this app.  Once user have successfully created an account, user will be able to place posts in the order in which they choose, even in reverse chronological order.  But the best feature of Feeder is that anyone can use the app wherever and whenever they want!  Even on the go, users will have the option to view posts on a shortened or full length article on their mobile device.  Another feed reader that I found helpful would have to be the Old Reader.  The Old Reader app allows users to conveniently share and recommend resources, literature and ideas with other users.  As a teacher, I found this to be very beneficial in the education world.  Other teachers, librarians and colleagues would be able to view your recommendations and together you would have the opportunity to grow professionally.    But whats even better, is that with Old Reader even if your colleagues are not subscribed to Old Reader, you are able to view and access tabs and articles that have received the most recommendations and that have been viewed the most and from there you are able to decide what tools, literature and ideas that you would like to add to your app.  The only thing that I struggled with is that with Old Reader there are no mobile apps like there are with Feeder.  The layout and design were not user friendly and seemed to be very distracting while trying to navigate the app.   The last feed reader that I would recommend is Feedly.   Feedly is one of the most common and most used feed readers available.  Educators and librarians find this feed reader to really be beneficial.  I found that with Feedly, the layout and design were very user friendly and easy to navigate.  Users are also able to tag stories and ideas that they come across.  But just like with Old Reader I did find drawbacks.  The biggest drawback that I found was that Feedly required a google account.  This was very disappointing because not all librarians and educators have a google account and they will hinder them from exploring the app.

Now I did mention three of the best feed readers, but there are so many more to choose from that have pros and cons.  As a future librarian, I had to take time to explore the recommended feed readers from an article that I was informed would help narrow down my search.  The article came from Vicki Volvovski entitled The 10 Best RSS Reader Apps of 2018.  This article was very helpful and provided information on the top ten apps that were recommended and provided users with information on each app.  I was able to explore the apps and then decide onder the one app that no only appealed to me, but was very fitting my professional and personal needs! 

To begin building and organizing my Feeder, is to explore other school librarian blogs and posts in order gather as much information and ideas I can professionally.  I want my Feeder to be very useful and easy accessible for me and my colleagues.  I have listed my top favorite five school librarian blogs below.

-https://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/  This blog was helpful because it kept up with the most up to date topics, graphics to attach to the blog and ideas and suggestions for future posts.

-http://www.nikkidrobertson.com/  With this blog, I enjoyed reading similar posts that I could relate to as well as this school librarians main goal to prepare her students for the digital era and how she supports her teachers with her digital expertise.

-http://www.librarian.net/  I found this blog very beneficial because I was able to gather ideas for my library and I enjoyed the large amount of topics and ideas discussed.

-https://justinthelibrarian.com/  This blog was very meaningful and discussed the importance of the impact a school library can have on the school community and public. 

-http://futura.edublogs.org/ This is the final blog that I found interesting.  Here the author discusses the importance of digital media and technology and how it can transform schools and libraries.

Last but certainly not least I recently became a Tumbler member.  Here is my link for you to follow and enjoy my posts! https://www.tumblr.com/blog/readingforthewin


I am looking forward to adding to this collection and blog! Stay tuned in for future posts!