Google Reader = My Addiction

I started blogging as part of an assignment when I was taking a professional development class about 2 years ago. I had never really seen blogs before (guess I am SUPER behind the times!) and didn't really know what they were for. The point of the class I was taking was to learn more ways to bring technology into the classroom and although I still don't know how I would use a blog in a high school math class, I have become almost addicted to reading blogs to get new ideas for all kinds of areas in life. As far as education, I honestly feel I got more ideas for my classroom by reading blogs compared to sitting through professional development that the school offered. I guess that would make sense considering usually professional development is general and I can use blogs to address specific and personal needs. I love that I can learn new ways to teach my class (when I was still teaching!) as well as find activities to do with my sons, get ideas for birthday parties, holiday decorating, baking, keep family members in the loop on our lives...you name it, it is out there which is so awesome!

Anyways...this is a long way to get to my point of this post. I learned how to use Google Reader in this class. I was so confused at first- what the heck is a feed burner? a reader? a subscription? But once I started using it, I realized how awesome it is! I know there are more ways to keep up with blogs but since using Google Reader is the only 'organizer' I learned to use, this is what I am going with here. :)

So, I am going to show you how to set up a Google Reader so you can easily keep up with all of your blogs in one place! (If you are like me, you might be following or subscribing to about 100 blogs which can be overwhelming!). And I know the pictures are small, but you can click on them to enlarge!

1. First you need to make a google account if you don't already have one. Then sign in!

2. Go to 'My Account' and click on 'More' at the bottom left.



3. Find and click on 'Reader' on the right column.



4. I always click on 'All Items' on the far left column. If you don't follow any blogs or subscribe to any blogs, your reader will say "Your reading list is empty". If you do follow blogs (which I am sure you do!), it will list the blogs you follow and any posts that you haven't read. Awesome!

Here is what my reader looks like:



Yikes! It is showing that I have over 300 posts I haven't read yet. But, that is because I subscribe to SO many blogs that I tend to only read the posts that interest me and not EVERY SINGLE post that is written. Sorry guys!

If you follow any more blogs, they will automatically be added to your blogger. So now you can just go straight to your reader to see all the new posts on your favorite blogs instead of jumping from website to website to website to website...

At the bottom left, there is a link to 'manage subscriptions'. You can go there to delete and update your reader.

Want to learn more about how to add subscriptions to your reader? Check back soon for another 'how to' for the google reader! :)


I link up to these parties!