A plan for edublogs.org

I’ve never been the best at crafting lengthy plans for things so here, very quickly, is a plan for how we can use edublogs.org for the maximum benefit for the least stress.

All of the voting, rating and scaling stuff went into two particular baskets at around the same time. Namely the ‘too hard’ and the ‘too horrible’ ones (it sometimes takes a while for one to realise that you don’t have to do what’s been done to you most of your life). OK, I’ll put the awards there too but that’s enough of that kind of stuff.

So, inspired by Mark Bernstein’s ‘protecting the blogosphere’ Blogtalk presentation (& podcast) I figure that the best way to use it is to do a Will and try to make a culture of sharing and promoting edublogs that might not get the usual amount of airtime otherwise.

What I’d like it to be, moreorless, is a portal for people looking for interesting weblogs that works better than googling ‘education blog’, or any search / ranking system for that matter.

And of course the only way to achieve that is through a bit of the old human intervention! But at the same time I don’t want this to be a ‘register and post your edublog’ experience as I reckon it could do with a bit of quality and restraint. Hence, here’s a plan for discussion:

1. I’ve set-up a WP Blog at edublogs.org, let’s figure out how to make it pretty and work well as a portal (my idea so far is to have categories operate as streams).

2. Each month we have a ‘Guest editor’ who, basically, posts for that month links to and commentary on edublogs that they think are worth sharing… they then retain the ability to post in the future if they want to (the same blog isn’t allowed to be posted about more than once per year – or the writer’s own). – All you have to do to become an editor is to express an interest… no posting requirements and people can edit as many times as they want.

Pretty simple huh. Do people think this is a good idea / approach? Suggestions more than welcome!

The differences between weblogs and discussion forums

Via Oliver:

“In several occasions we had no convincing argument why discussion via weblogs are different from news groups.” [Peter on eEducation]

I *know* that the first thing people think of is how they can use these like discussion forums but pleeeeeeeeease let’s not perpetuate that. I can’t think of any convincing argument…. they’re as different as boats and cars, no, more different:

Blogs versus discussion forums in postgraduate online continuing medical education

Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments

Planned Communities

I think I flatter myself to think that Alan has spent the hours required to trawl through Centred Communication but if he has I reckon we’re on the same page.

A most excellent addition to the emerging physical-virtual environments discussion in considering the pretty awful Apple digital campus exchange and, dare I say it, another contribution to the quickly spreading neighboursphere ;o>

If you want an earlier critique to figure out exactly how much Apple pay attention then have a look at my whining in April about the Apple digital campus blog.

[BTW, I think I can add this quote “Open communication and collaboration starts here” [my emphasis] to the BBopensource project as one of my all time favourite corporate bullshit exercises… hope you enjoy your: “discussion forums on a wide range of topics” guys and next time, why don’t you consider hiring someone to put it together who knows wtf is going on ;o>]

Creating your neighboursphere – Hubs & Hubris

I’ve posted over at Blogsavvy about creating the foundations for a local community using weblogs and aggregation.

What I’m arguing is that hubs (like Urban Vancouver) don’t work so well and that hubris (individuals aggregated) is a much better model, just that I’ll have to go and create that to prove my point :o) Whaddya reckon?

Update: Well, that’s one of lifes ambitions realised… I think I’ve just coined ‘neighboursphere’ (or ‘neighborsphere’, depending where you come from :o)