Thing #11

Once again, I really enjoyed creating this post. Sometimes (I stress SOMETIMES) blogs can be a great source of commentary on news. The problem with using blogs to keep up with news is that they are not as reliable as a real news site. They are not held accountable to any standards. That being said, if you take everything they say with a grain of salt, they can still be thought-provoking. I personally watch Think Progress, Huffington Post, Crooks and Liars, and Newsbusters.org. Although I rarely take anything they say too seriously, they can be entertaining.

Finding good blogs is the challenge - there are TONS of blogs, and most of them are pointless, biased, or even misinformative. In the past, I have heard of some blogs by word-of-mouth, but this method is imprecise at best. Instead, it is far easier to use a search engine. Some search engines, like Feedster, have gone the way of the dinosaur, and are now extinct. Others, like Topix, are too hard to navigate. The most useful one is certainly Technorati, because it provide a "Top 100" list, which does a lot of the work in weeding out the junk for you. I have found that Google Blog search is useful to read specific posts, but not so usfeul to keep up with particular blogs.

What do you think? Do you find news blogs useful? Or do you find them biased and pIs it appropriate to expose children to such sources? Will you use them in your classroom?