Searching the Search Tools

I recently read a blog post presented by a company aiming to increase the online presence and marketablity of private businesses.  The post included various websites and search engines out there available to assist businesses in turning better results in social media searches for their brand.  While I'm sure extremely helpful to some, the list was so comprehensive I found myseld exhausted just trying to keep up as I perused it. 

It's times like these that I feel our digital age is pummeling us into a brave new world, emphasis on the new, with one very important piece missing: the edit.  I recognize the irony of discovering that we need a filter built into all of this newness as I was reviewing new means for producing clearer search options (I feel like I am seriously in danger of tumbling into the matrix with that sentence).  Nonetheless, the whole thing kind of makes me want to lie down and take a nap.

Similarly, The Chronicle recently produced an article on an FSU Instructor who graded her students based on their Klout scores (according to the article, "Klout.com calculates “influence” based on a user’s level of engagement on sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook).  Granted, the course was about online marketing so kudos to the Proff for grading based in the learning outcomes but still...

While teaching in the digital age, do you ever find yourself overwhelmed with all of the "helpful" resources out there for educators?

I'm not sure if it's my compulsive need to sort and order information (hi, I'm an educator, nice to meet you) or just my way of staying sane while weeding my way through the fronteirs of virtual life, but the educational sites I have found myself most drawn to are actually the ones where you become your own internet curator.  You know, education's answer to Pinterest.  Have you tried Zotero or Diigo?  Both of these sites allow users to bookmark, annotate, and cite relevant internet sources and both have functionality to create and join groups of like-minded individuals.  In their help section, Diigo states "Diigo aims to dramatically improve your online productivity."  I'm not sure about THAT big of a promise, but I would highly recommend checking these two sites out.

Are there any other sites that you can't live without as an educator?  Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all of the "helpful sites" out there aiming to "increase your online productivity"?