Category: Blogging

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Why I don’t want to lose Google Reader

Reader logo

I just left a comment on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog Websites of the Day, in response to a post called The Best Alternatives To Google Reader Now That It’s Being Shut Down. As the title suggests, after Google dropped the bombshell today about closing down Google Reader, Larry was very helpfully suggesting some alternatives. And they are good suggestions of course, but I think this decision to shut down Reader is more far-reaching than just finding an alternative tool.

Anyway, I left quite a long comment on the post with a few ideas that were on my mind, so I thought I’d crosspost it here as well, just in case it helps stimulate further discussion.  But please do go visit Larry’s original post…

Larry,

I agree with you… I’m deeply disappointed that Google is shutting down Reader. And as good as these suggestions for alternatives are, I suspect most of them will be fairly poor replacements for Reader…

a) Reader is a part of the Google suite of tools. When I’m logged into Gmail all day, have my Calendar and Drive open, regularly connecting to YouTube or Maps or Blogger, then the convenience of having Reader as part of that suite is huge. In a school situation, running Google Apps for Education, the fact that it’s just a built-in part of the environment you work in is hugely powerful. Single sign on. One click, boom, you’re there. Alternatives will break that convenience.

b) Reader is not just a website, it’s a whole RSS management engine. Most of the ways I consume the RSS feeds in Reader don’t actually involve me going to reader.google.com. Instead, they are picked up by Flipboard, River of News, or some other service. I have feeds that act as triggers for cron jobs. I have feeds that do all sorts of things and end up on all sorts of other services and devices, and the reason I can do this is because the Reader API is so open and ubiquitous. When I open FlipBoard I see an option to automatically grab the feeds from Reader… I don’t see any other options there for Bloglines or Feedly or Newsblur. I may be able to set that up manually, I don’t know I haven’t looked, but these other tools don’t have anywhere near the ubiquity of the Reader API.

c) I think your fears about losing Feedburner are well founded. I’m concerned about that too.

d) Like many bloggers, I’ve gradually built up a readership through people subscribing to my blog. While I don’t suppose that all of them subscribe using Reader, I’m sure many do. I’ll be expecting to see my blog readership numbers fall through the floor when Reader gets turned off. I think the same will happen to many others.

e)Ooverall, I’m just disappointed that Google would even consider doing this. As an enthusiastic Google user, Google Certified Teacher, and Google Apps Certified Trainer, it makes me annoyed and embarrassed that Google would kill off a product that so many people clearly care deeply about. Reader may not be sexy and shiny like Google+ but it’s hugely powerful and has an huge following. To see the #Reader hashtag push the #pope hashtag from the top spot today certainly makes me wonder how they can claim that “hardly anyone uses Reader”. I’m hoping they will listen to the people and reverse this decision, much like they did recently with Calendar Appointment Slots. Google CAN show they listen to what people want. I just hope they do it this time as well.

d) I get that Reader is a free service. I get that Google has the right to do whatever the hell it wants with it. But to give it to us and then suddenly take it away feels like bait and switch to me. It makes me question what else might get taken away some day. And it makes me feel much less like I can rely on, or trust, Google.

e) I’d even offer to pay an annual fee for Reader, but that hasn’t even been offered as an option. Not now, not in the past.

It’s all just very disappointing.

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Edublog Awards Nominations 2012

It’s that time of year again. Time to submit nominations for the 2012 Edublog Awards.

There are those who criticise the idea of giving out awards for educational blogs as being a bit silly, or a bit unnecessary, or a bit selfserving, or a bit self-indulgent. They complain that the voting process is flawed, or that it’s just a popularity contest, or that it promotes the wrong kinds of values.  Some complain that it’s just a chance for gratuitous self promotion, both for the bloggers themselves and for the companies that promote educational blogging.

I’m not one of those people. I think anything that supports, encourages and promotes the use of blogs in education is a good thing. Blogs are all about writing, sharing, thinking, pondering. Writing a blog forces you to clarify your thinking, state your position, defend your point of view. Blogging is a way to connect with others, debate ideas that matter to you, build a community of learners and be part of a bigger conversation.

Some say that blogs are not really needed any more now that we have so many other outlets. Yes, social networks are wonderful forums for sharing, but blogs are different. Facebook and Google+ have taken over many of the sharing functions that blogs originally had, and for simple sharing of links, videos and pictures, they probably do a better job. Twitter might be a quick, easy and more conversational way to share stuff, but it’s highly ephemeral and can lack depth because of the 140 character limit. A good blog can go deeper, have greater substance, more permanence, and better reflect the personality of the blogger.

Speaking personally, a large part of the connection, camaraderie and community that I experience every day from my network of friends and colleagues originated from my blog. So many of the opportunities I’ve had to meet, talk, share and even travel, have come from the connections I’ve made here. Don’t underestimate the value of blogging. But blogging takes work. It takes a degree of dedication and commitment to stick with it, to keep producing posts that push your thinking a little bit further each time. It takes a degree of bravery to commit ideas to print for the world to see, and to be willing to both stand by your beliefs, to be willing to have them challenged, and sometimes changed. Sure, blogging is about writing, but it’s about so much more than just writing. Blogging is personal growth in a public forum. And that takes courage.

So I don’t think the idea of having Edublog Awards is silly at all. If people are willing to put their ideas out there and engage in conversation with others, they deserve every bit of encouragement and recognition they can get.

So, it is with pleasure that I present my nominations for the 2012 Edublog Awards…

Best Individual Blog
Jabiz Raisdana (http://www.jabizraisdana.com/blog/)  Jabiz is a thinker… always challenging, always thoughtful, always pushing the boundaries. He shares openly and freely, he understands what it means to be a node in a network, and he is never afraid to explore his ideas in public. He writes with passion and insight and deserves to be read widely.

Best Teacher Blog
Rebekah Madrid (http://rebekahmadrid.wordpress.com/) Rebekah defines what it means for a teacher to have heart and soul. She cares so deeply about what she does and the students she teaches, and her blog puts it all out there for the world. She is a teacher who shares what goes on in her classroom, and in sharing her thinking with the world she strives to make it better all the time.

Best Teacher Blog
Zoe Page (http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/pagez/) Zoe is a kindergarten teacher who discovered the value of connectedness a couple of years ago and fully embraced it. She’s not a techie, just a passionate and committed educator who cares enormously about being the best teacher she can be. Her blog shares what she does with her kids and documents a personal journey of enormous growth.

Most Influential Blogpost
Everything you know about curriculum may be wrong. Really. (http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/everything-you-know-about-curriculum-may-be-wrong-really/)  Easily the best blog post I’ve read this year. Maybe ever. It deserves all the attention it gets.

Best Library Blog
PLC Junior School Library (http://blogs.ludus.me/jlibrary/) Sandra McMullan is the librarian who publishes this blog. Although I was the person who introduced her blogging in the first place, I think she deserves recognition for the way she has embraced the idea and evolved her blog into a really vibrant online resource of links, book reviews, photos, and news.

Best educational use of audio/video/visual/podcast
The Google Educast (http://edreach.us/channel/googleeducast/) Ok, full disclaimer, I sometimes get to be part of this video podcast on the Edreach network, but since I’m not personally responsible for it, I’m nominating it anyway. The Google Educast is a weekly video podcast hosted by an amazing group of Google Certified Teachers that share news, tips and ideas for teaching with Google tools. It was one of the first podcasts to adopt the use of Google+ Hangouts on Air.

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Gutless Comments

About 5 years ago, there was an incident in Adelaide where a classroom blog and the South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services had a bit of a falling out.  It was well documented at the time, so I’m not going to rehash it here, suffice to say that it was a bunfight at the time and as a result there was significant tension between the educational blogging community and the Powers That Be in South Australia.

Like many other bloggers, I expressed my thoughts on it at the time. I spoke to the person who was directly affected by the dispute, as well as a number of other people in the know. Eventually, everyone involved tried to take what they could learn from the situation and we all just moved on.  Life is too short to be dragged down by that stuff.

However, over the last few weeks I’ve had some idiot posting abusive comments on this blog expressing (quite forcefully) their opinions on that situation from 2007. They have been abusive and rude to me personally, bluntly telling me that I’m an idiot and I don’t know what I’m talking about, and calling me all sorts of insulting and derogatory names. No need for details, suffice to say that they are just generally being an ignorant asshole.

What really pisses me off about this is that the person in question -who calls themselves “pav” or “pavalot” – is too gutless to use their real name, real email address or real website. They have the temerity to leave abusive comments on my blog, and possibly other blogs too, without having the courage to identify themselves or further engage in a debate about their point of view.

Naturally, I pick these comments up immediately and mark them as the spam trash they are. Nobody cares about the point of view of some ignorant nob who doesn’t even have the courage or common decency to use their real name.

So, whoever you are, I’ll tell you want. I’m happy to slug it out with you in private. You really want to have an argument with me about some incident that happened 5 years ago? I think you should grow up, but hey, bring it on. But do it as yourself, rather than hide behind a made-up email address and non-existent website. You have zero credibility when you do that and I will just keep removing your insulting, ignorant and libelous comments and putting them in the trash where they belong.

PS: I’ve reported your IP address to Internode as well, along with the full digital headers of your transactions. I hope they nail you to the wall.