CONNECT- Searching Blogs

For my digital literacy lab I decided to explore the blogosphere by learning tools designed for searching blogs. The main tool I focused on was IceRocket. Ice Rocket allows users to search for blogs across the internet by content, author, language, and date. (The date feature is really nice).

I had two really interesting experiences while using IceRocket that I want to share:

The Auzzie:

While on IceRocket, I decided to entere a search about the Royal Society of London to see who had been writing about it recently. After scanning through a couple results, I found a blog from a person in Australia who was reviewing a book about the Royal Society of London and specifically how different country’s intellectual movements were funded and shaped by government funding. It was fascinating blog post and I ultimately decided to write a post about it myself.

I felt like this was a neat experience because I was able to connect with someone who literally lived half-way across the world in Australia and I was able to understand and see their perspective on some really interesting issues.

What was cool, however, is what came next…

Tales from Provo:

As I started reviewing the search results from my query again, I found another blog that had some great insights about the Royal Society of London. I thought, “Man, this is a great post”. As I began to look closer, I noticed that the person was from BYU. As I looked even closer, it hit me, that the blogger was not only from BYU, but she was in even my class!!! She (Shuan Pai) had written about the Royal Society of London and I had missed her post in the normal review of my fellow classmates’ blogs.

It was only through a blog searching tool that I was able to connect with her (someone with whom I have class every week). I feel like IceRocket is a great resource to be able to connect with other people and find what saying, whether that be across the world or across the class room.