Fall colors of the cypress forrests at Caddo

To begin your positive learning experiences (or to continue more intentionally) try targeting the people in your domain of interest who you most admire, and see if they have a weblog (search Google’s: http://blogsearch.google.com) or a standard website. When you find a few people you respect and enjoy their online presence, send them comments (if a blog), or email them and ask a question about an article you enjoyed. Look for a blogroll on their site and see who they are “connected” to. This usually leads you to connecting with additional people with similar interests who are also informative and provide valuable information resources.

After you locate a few good resources, you are on your way to a new way of learning and collaborating with people! To keep up with these new resources you may choose to subscribe to their sites so you can receive continuous updates to their articles and posts. The process of collecting or aggregating content in this way is simple to do with a “content aggregator”. Think of a magazine you subscribe to, which comes in the mail or online. Aggregation is much the same as a magazine subscription, but much more. It gives you an opportunity to choose precisely which articles you want to read and from the people you choose to subscribe to! Products like Google Reader (if you have a Google account you already have access to “Reader”), Netvibes, a very useful personal portal, NetNewsWire, a Mac desktop reader application, xxxxxxx, a windows desktop reader, and many similar products. [reference webtools section - aggregators]

Content aggregation is a simple process of an application that is capable of collecting RSS based site information and providing the user with a list of articles updated from each of the collected sites. The articles are available to view in abstract (shortened) form or the complete article. You can read it within the aggregator application or click on the title and it will take you to the site it originates from. I encourage you to try working with it, and to plan the type of information you want to have access to and the purpose of your “research”. Then, use RSS search engines such as Feedster.com and blogsearch.google.com to search for topics and sites of interest.

The blogroll on this site is a good starting point. Link to some of these sites and see if it provides the type of information that will help you with learning and deepening your skills of web design. When you find a good site, observe that author’s blogroll and discover the people that he/she links to and communicates with. This is a good way to build your own resources.