Blogs can be written by anyone – experts, teachers, writers, or just ordinary people. There are blogs on every topic imaginable, from apple growing to zoology. People write blogs to share information, keep an online journal, or connect with people with similar interests. This blog is about sharing things I’ve learnt about learning.

Why blogs are great for students: You can find blogs related to your courses, about studying, and about your interests. They are a great way to keep up to date with new developments, get insights and learn new things. Because the information is in short doses it’s quick to read and easy to remember.

You can also start to build connections with people in your area of interest by reading blogs and adding useful comments, and by blogging yourself.

How to find blogs:

1. Use Google’s blogsearch
2. Look at technorati
3. Once you find a blogger you like, follow their blogroll (a list of blogs they read & recommend) & other blogs they quote.

I absolutely recommend that you find a selection of good blogs in the topics you’re studying, and about general study skills.

Once you’re following a few blogs, you’ll find you don’t want to check a dozen websites every day – so the next post will explain “RSS feeds” and “feed readers”, which allow you see new posts from all your blogs in one place.

For more information about blogs, here’s a great video explanation of what they are and why they’re useful from commoncraft.

Enjoy!

What it is: del.icio.us is a “social bookmarking” site. When you’re surfing the internet, and want to go back to a page,
you probably save it to your Favorites or Bookmarks, right? Instead you can save it to del.icio.us, which is online, not on your computer. You can then access it on any computer – I’m constantly coming across things at home for school, and vice versa.

That’s handy, but what’s even cooler is that you can share your bookmarks with others (you can also choose to keep it private). So my friends can see what I’m reading.

Why this is great for students:

1. You can access the pages you bookmark from home at school, and vice versa.

2. If your lecturer uses del.icio.us they can bookmark useful sites for you (to see mine, go to http://del.icio.us/1kim)

3. You can use the bookmarks for research – my o my!

When you find a blogger in your area of interest, check out theirdel.icio.us bookmarks. You can also see who else has bookmarked the page, then look at their bookmarks, and so on, and so on (I’ve circled this bit in the screenshot above).

You can also search from the del.icio.us website, say on “project management” and follow the trail from there. Instead of doing a basic google search, you’re limiting your search to sites that people already think are useful. Cool, eh?

I absolutely recommend that you check it out. I can’t believe how many useful sites I found in one day using this – it would previously have taken me days to find this much research. It’s wonderful. Of course, it can get addictive, so you have to know when to cut off.

Here’s some more information that you might find useful:

• A simple explanation of del.icio.us at eduGuru
• Top 10 ways to use del.icio.us (the top few are a bit techie, but keep reading).
• There’s heaps of cool del.icio.us apps and ideas at Lifehacker or Quick Online Tips.