Sunday, April 14, 2013

How to keep up with all the great ideas you find on blogs!!???

In my job as a technology specialist working in an elementary school I am constantly being asked to recommend a lesson or a plan or an app.   Not to mention, my creative and crafty side is always looking for the best recipes and crafting ideas....  So how do I keep track of them and keep my brain from exploding?

Two ways - first, I subscribe to a blog reader.  I used to use Google Reader and life was good.  Then, a few weeks ago we got the pop-up window to tell us that it was being discontinued.  DOH!!  So I switched to Feedly.

Feedly offers several views and until today I was getting by with it, but not loving it.  Finally I figured out how to make it work for me!  And I thought I'd share with all of you.

When you first log in to Feedly, be sure to choose the option to "connect to Google Reader" to import all of your blogs you have been following!


After you have your blogs imported, this is where the organizing comes in!   The view I found today lets me read the whole article.  Feedly defaults to Today (on the left) and Magazine view (on the right).  I change both of those!

On the left, I pick All and on the right I choose Full Article.


This will show me the full text of all new articles in ALL of the blogs I read.  This means I go to one place to read the hundreds of blogs I want to read and that I only have to see the posts that are new.

So, now that we have the view set up - what next?   I scroll through and anything I want to save or refer to later, I click on the title of the post.   It opens in a new window.  Across the top of the image below you will see all the articles I have planned to read further and save for later.
 (and of course I have facebook open because who doesn't!) 

Now I can easily pin each of those articles (if after I read them they are worth saving!) to my organized Pinterest board.

Having lots of different boards has made my Pinterest more useful.   I started out with a food/recipes board. But then I pinned hundreds of recipes and I couldn't find anything.  I now have a few:   Food -  Clean/Whole/Paleo/Primal, Food - Delicious Drinks, Food - Sweet and Yummy and Food - Main and Side Dishes.   Chances are much better now that I will find my recipe easily when I'm ready to cook!


Once I pin those ideas, I close the windows and start reading more blogs on feedly!  And I am able to find ideas I pinned when I need them.  I have 10 boards related to education, 8 for holidays, 4 for food, 3 for exercise/health and a ton of fashion/crafty/style ideas!  

Follow me on Pinterest!  

1 comment:

  1. Great ideas! So hard to keep up with technology when it's so overwhelming!

    ReplyDelete