Task 4: Damn

I really thought this part would be right in my wheelhouse (as we baseball fans like to say). I had anticipated that the RSS feeds, at least, would be something I could appreciate. For several years now I've been subscribing to various podcasts, keeping them on both my computer and iPod, and listening to them in the car, on walks, etc. I love my podcasts. I figured RSS feeds from favorite news sites, websites, or blogs would work basically the same way. I totally bought the idea that taking the time to actually visit the websites of the New York Times or The New Yorker or Salon.com was soooooooo 20th century, and that it would be so much more efficient to let Google Reader send me stuff from those websites instead. I fully expected that after this task, at least, I could manage to sound like an enthusiastic 2.0 fan.

Damn. No such luck. It's been incredibly frustrating. My biggest gripe (as Amy knows, god bless her, because I've been e-mailing her repeatedly about this), is that I can't delete all the content (about 90% of it, mind you) that I know at first sight I don't want. With podcasts or with e-mails you can quickly eliminate stuff that you know isn't relevant to you or that you don't want to waste time on. Over the last few years I've gotten really good at doing that, even though it's difficult for a pack rat like me. I've become downright brutal about deleting an NPR story or a song-of-the-day or a podcast episode that I know I'm never going to make time for. I still end up with a long list of songs or podcasts-in-waiting, and it's sometimes months later that I finally catch up on them, but that's how I deal with it, and so far it's worked for me. But apparently (and I say this with absolute shock and disgust, after hours and hours of trying to prove otherwise) -- apparently, Google Reader will NOT LET ME DELETE THINGS I DON'T WANT, and that makes the whole experience completely frustrating and overwhelming. (There's that word again - "overwhelming".)

From what I've seen so far, I would much rather continue just visiting the NYTimes website, or Salon.com, or whatever other websites and blogs I happen to like, and deciding for myself what I want to click on and maybe read and maybe even bookmark for future use. That seems far less stressful, less scattered and confusing, and less time-consuming than having Google Reader send me this endless deluge of stuff that I CAN'T MANAGE THE WAY I WANT TO. Believe me, it pains me to still be so negative and grouchy about the one thing I expected to be positive about, but I just can't help it.

Unfortunately, to finish this task, I'm supposed to talk about one thing I actually liked. I wish I could say that it's one of the educational blogs, but so far they haven't impressed me. The "Infinite Thinking Machine", or whatever it's called, seems like mostly a promotional site for various authors and seminar leaders. I don't blame them for jumping on the 2.0 gravy train and finding a way to make a living that doesn't involve spending the rest of their lives in actual classrooms with actual children. They get to travel, they get to be treated like experts, and they get to spend most of their time talking to adults with functioning frontal lobes. Sweet. But as one who does have to be back in a classroom with actual children tomorrow, I don't see anything in their P.R. blurbs that makes me want to waste time on them tonight. As for the "iLearn Technology" site, most of it seems to be cute little activities for elementary kids. (In Web 2.0, as in most educational arenas, it seems that much of what you see is aimed at wide-eyed, eager 4th graders -- not at the pseudo-cynical, pseudo-world-weary junior high kids whom I try to teach. I have yet to see an educational guru -- computerized or not -- who seems to be dealing with the same kids I am every day.) Actually, I do like the "Free Technology for Teachers" site (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/), which I think was recommended on one of the sample blogs we visited in an earlier task -- or maybe it was one of the sample blogs. Anyway, I like it because it's just nuts and bolts recommendations, not a lot of preaching about we must "revolutionize our teaching for the 21st century" or a lot of cutesy, gimmicky stuff. I've seen several things on there that I could imagine using some day (although for now, of course, I've just starred them in case some day I actually have time to read them, and god knows when I'd find the time to actually figure them out and use them).

Another site I've liked (if only because I hadn't discovered it before through other means) is The New York Times "Lens" blog (http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/) Is it a blog or just a website? -- whatever. Anyway, every day they send you maybe 12 or 15 "pictures of the day" from NYTimes photographers all around the world, and in between they have various stories or feature galleries or what-not from one of those photographers. (A recent example of the latter was an op-ed from a Times photographer in Iraq about why he dislikes The Hurt Locker. Very interesting.) You can view any of the photo galleries on "full screen" as "slide shows" and they're freaking cool. I plan to spend a lot of time on current events next year and I think looking at this site with the kids will be a regular feature. But I don't really need Google Reader for that, do I? Now that I know I like it, I'll just bookmark it and go there whenever I want, instead of having Google Reader send me a relentless stream of stuff that it won't let me delete!?!?!

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I like visiting the individual sites, whether it's somebody's blog or The New Yorker or whatever. The sites feel like real destinations, and they each have their own personality, which Google Reader definitely does not. Aside from the irritation of trying to manage all the stuff it sends me, it's depressing to think that I'd be looking at it all the time and not at the sources themselves. We're already getting so disconnected from individual newspapers and such, and I don't like the idea of only seeing parts of what they do boiled down to a list at one location. Take, for example, the site Strange Maps (http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/) which I've had bookmarked for several years now. I don't go there very often, just every few months or so, but I like visiting and scrolling through and seeing what they've been up to lately. Same with, say, A Way With Words (http://www.waywordradio.org/) or The Onion (http://www.theonion.com/content/) or James Howard Kunstler's blog about architecture and planning (http://www.kunstler.com/index.php). The latter, in particular, is very quirky and interesting to look through, but they all have their charms and I don't really want them filtered through Google Reader. I'd rather just go visit them once in a while.

Anyway, I'll continue on to Task 5, of course, and keep messing with this. But so far this, too, has me feeling like Grumpy Grumperson. Maybe that's what I should call this blog. Or I could use Spiro Agnew's line -- "Nattering Naybob of Negativism".