Feed Reader Technology
So far so good, however, the great thing about blogs is that you can use RSS feed readers (RSS is just a technical standard - a 'feed' is the information source) to receive an update when new information has been posted to any number of blogs. Keep the feed reader open, and you get short titles of new content as soon as it's added. I've been using Feedreader (download for free at FeedReader) to monitor a number of sites about education, technology, news, etc.
Saving Time
The time spent trying to find valuable information and resources and actually reading these resources has been cut dramatically. There is SO much information available that it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up. Blogs point out interesting new content, places to look for new information, etc. By using a feed reader (also called syndicating) you can scan the headlines of sites you know will provide interesting information.
An Example
Let's say I'm an ESL teacher who works teaching business English and English to middle-school students in Japan. I can set up my feed reader to accept new business stories from Asia with these feeds: Asia Business Intelligence and AsiaOne. I can then add feeds from the brain Connection, and the International Education Webzine for information concerning teaching techniques. I might also add the feed for this site to keep me posted on new content and general ESL teaching information. Of course, I've probably got other interests: tennis, technology, German culture, etc. - so I'll add feeds from sites providing information on those subjects. Once I've finished, I just open my feed reader and the new content gets pushed to me in easily digestible headlines.
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