When I started out with edublogs.org I figured that the best thing to call it was exactly that, edublogs.org – basically because it’s a pretty easily memorable url and it seemed a bit presumptuous to call it ‘edublogs’ seeing as there are plenty of edublogs out there (and blogs called edublogs!) and I didn’t want it to appear like I was trying to take any ownership of the more general space – because I wasn’t and I’m not.

However, as the site continues to grow at an alarmingly rapid pace (over 8,000 blogs now there!!!) I’m wondering whether ‘edublogs.org’ sounds a bit clunky (especially in considering a logo design) and if just calling it ‘edublogs’ might make things a lot more straightforward in terms of talking about it and branding it.

So whaddya reckon? Is it worth changing? Is it too presumptuous to call it ‘edublogs’?

I mentioned this site yesterday in the links but today Homecoming has an even better post outlining (with plenty of links) a literacy workshop on blogs and blogging… great stuff & a must read for anyone starting out in the blogs and education field.

• Homecoming
  "I blog because I learn from blogging. I like the feeling of immersing myself in a topic I am very interested in, thinking through the ideas and then commenting with my perspective."
• Tuttle SVC » The Cone of Silence
  "Anyhow, what’s striking about this is that every time I meet someone, they seem to have some crazy story about a major player in ed tech or IT who is interested in some kind of open source project, but everything is hush-hush. It is like the open, collaborative miracle of open source software development is being subsumed by the prevailing culture of ed-tech, which is, conferences and keynotes and a clutch of bloggers notwithstanding, pretty damn close-mouthed. I’m baffled."
• Anecdote – Our take on how to talk about knowledge management
  Am not entirely sure of the value of *making* people enter details to get a whitepaper – isn’t the real value in circulation – but still this one from Anecdote is probably worth it.
• AdAge – Interactive Marketing and the Media
  This one’s a big ol’ pdf but well worth having a look at for a free & comprehensive overview of what’s up in marketing & the media (via Rubel).
• Exploiting Citizen Journalists
  Mark Jones should meet up with Derek Powazek at Darren Rowse’s house with Ben Barren providing the music – I’ll bring the beer. Seriously though this is a valuable perspective on the importance of Terms and Conditions in dealing with ‘authentic media’. Not too sure if I’m on the same page as Mark as to the potential for the kind of stuff he’s referring to (see my comment) but heck I wanna talk about it!

Seems like the now quite obvious explosion is having some nice repercussions.

In particular I’m having my own little private photoshoot today for a story The Australian is going to be running on edublogs.org and in addition to that Jo McLeay was kind enough to mention learnerblogs (and it’s rather bizarre genesis!) in The Age:

“I was listening to a podcast last year and I heard James Farmer from Deakin University speak about his teacher blog sites,” Ms McLeay says. “He is known worldwide for setting up these educational blogs and someone asked him why he hadn’t set them up for students. Right away he said it was a great idea and set up the ‘learner blogs’ on the spot – I contacted him the next day and got them for our students.”

Heh :)

Particularly encouraging though is Jo’s experience so far with the site:

“So far the experiment has been a resounding success, with nothing but positive feedback from the school, the students and the parents.”

Now if that doesn’t make it worthwhile I don’t know what does!

• Powazek: Just a Thought: Design for Selfishness
  "Because we solve a problem they have. Because we give them something they can’t get anywhere else. Because we enable a kind of communication that’s unlike anything else. Because we make their lives more convenient. Because we give them, or save them, money. Because we enable them to do more with less. Because they told us they wanted to."

• Four Freedoms
  If this isn’t a pretty effective use of edublogs.org, I don’t know what is.. over 90 comments on some of the posts, great work!
• IT|Redux » Getting Things Done with Office 2.0
  Worth a shot, I could do with the guidance.. isn’t it funny that we spend so long in education (and especially in HE) learning so very little that will actually benefit us on ‘the other side’. Seriously, one of the best things I could’ve done with being taught, even at Uni, would have been typing!
• The Dilbert Blog: Respecting the Beliefs of Others
  "Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity. At least that’s what I tell people after I mock them. Or to put it another way, I’ve never seen anyone change his mind because of the power of a superior argument or the acquisition of new facts. But I’ve seen plenty of people change behavior to avoid being mocked."

And there was I thinking that I could preserve the first wonderful moments of getting WPMU to run… I’d rather look on it as endearing naivety than plain ‘dumb’ but as an attempted update died a couple of months ago I had to revert to a backed up version and whaddya know… left the newblog creator in, and now we have a plague of splogs.

So, today I’m backing up the lot of them, and then deleting everything that I don’t know should be kept. At the moment my list of ‘survivors’ are In the Bungelow, Bionic Teacher, Open Your Eyes to China, Plu Runs, and Mr Blake’s ClassBlog… the rest are getting flushed.

Unless of course you know of some that should be saved either as archives or as current projects? Just ping me a list of their urls (incsub.org/wpmu/???) and I’ll posthumously save ’em :)

• Digging up the news – Mar. 27, 2006
  Good Digg article.
• Businesspundit: Punishment, Self-Interest, and Cooperation – Why the Altruism of Web2.0 Doesn't Exist
  Particularly interesting aspect of this is that 1% of Digg-ers actually vote, people *don’t want to* participate, they just want to be in the know, and are happy to trust / let this 1% decide what’s worth them knowing… bit like a good old fashioned newspaper wouldn’t you say :)

Having spent a lot of time with undergrads talking about blogs in the last couple of weeks I’m starting to develop a love / hate relationship with myspace – Love, because 75% of them are happier to get involved & have a better understanding that they were last year – Hate, because everytime someone says ‘go post a blog’ it grates like nails along a blackboard. Maybe it’s just me getting older…

What better way to spend your weekend than to catch all 12 minutes of my Blogs as PLEs screencast which is now live over at the HigherEd BlogCon.

It’s not the best presentation I’ve ever put together but it does synthesise some of my thoughts on the area… and you’re welcome to comment / criticise or query… just do it over there to make me look popular ;)