Keeping Track of the Good Stuff

On Saturday I shared with you how to keep up with the flow of good information that is found on the web. Today, I'd like to share with you some strategies and tools for keeping track of the good stuff that you find through your RSS reader.

Use an Online Bookmarking Service.
Yes, you can use the bookmark option in your web browser, but those bookmarks are only saved on one computer. If you use multiple computers, you will want a way to access your bookmarks from every computer you use. Online bookmarking services allow you to save links and snippets of text (helpful for remembering why you bookmarked a site) into one account that you can access anywhere. There are a lot of good online bookmarking services, Diigo and Evernote are very popular, but I use Google Bookmarks for this purpose. Google Bookmarks is a part of my Google account which means that I don't have to remember multiple account names and passwords. Below you will find two tutorials for getting started with Google Bookmarks.




Another popular online bookmarking service is Delicious. Although it was widely rumored last December that Delicious might shut-down, it is still chugging along as a part of Yahoo. The Common Craft video below explains the benefits of social bookmarking and how to use Delicious.


Diigo has been popular with educators for quite a while. Some of its features moved behind a paywall last year, but it's still a good service to consider as a replacement for Delicious. Last fall,  Jose Picardo (I highly recommend his blog) posted a quick guide to annotating using Diigo. He created the video for his students and if you're considering using Diigo with your students it could be very useful for you too. The video is embedded below.

A Guide to Annotating using Diigo from José Picardo on Vimeo.


Bookmarking and Sharing Links in Google Reader.
So after reading about RSS in Saturday's post you signed up for Google Reader and started subscribing to your favorite blogs. That's great! Now let's look at how you can save and share the stories you find interesting in your Google Reader.

When you come across a story in your Google Reader account that you want to save for quick access later, you can simply star it and it will be added your "starred stories" category. You can go back and access those stories later.
Step 1.

Step 2.

You can also share stories from within Google Reader. The Google-produced video below shows you how to do this.