Edublog Award time is upon the edublogosphere and, given some of the already interesting discussions that I’ve seen about them, I’m going to voice my own opinion - not as any kind of moral conscience but just as my own opinion.
I’ve written about the edublogosphere and how, in a nutshell, it’s a case of some bloggers who have high profiles voicing ideas and thoughts and others following. For myself, it’s a case that there are blogs that I read regularly, blogs I find via other blogs and blogs I find doing searches just to see if someone new is around. I have also found a number of people who do most of their discussing in social networks which eliminates them despite their good ideas.
Why do we need these?
I get that we want to honour those who are doing exceptional work. We want to encourage people to use these tools, contribute to the blogosphere and a host of other things. I just don’t understand the why. With the Twitter becoming a tool I’m using as much as my blog, I’m wondering if we’re at a different point now. As teachers integrate tools and use them seamlessly with their teaching, there are new examples of Flat projects and people assisting others with these. The projects are becoming much more collaborative in nature with all kinds of people contributing to the overall success of the project.
Individual teachers might be using blogs but they might also see podcasting or use of ustream and video as being a better use of their time never making it to the point of posting because, face it, it does take time and dedication. As I talk about in my last post, some people are just very busy and being part of the edublogosphere isn’t one thing they do.
Doug Belshaw has been taking it on the chin for a few things lately. (Must of been his week!) If you go over to his post regarding his thoughts about the awards, you’ll see all kinds of comments from those who have very good points about why the awards are important to, well, the other stuff which has nothing to do with the awards. The main point, however, is pointed out by Karyn Romeis’
I don’t have a problem with the notion of the awards, I think it raises the profile of blogging per se and it always brings a few previously overlooked gems to my attention. That said, if Doug doesn’t like the idea, I think he should be allowed the space to say so and to give his reasons for saying so.
You can disagree with his reasons and give your own reasons. It’s unfortunate that the rest of the stuff comes up. Having said that, I’m not sure that I like what happens when people are campaigning to get their blogs nominated for various awards. I don’t believe that was the intention of the whole thing but I could be wrong. (Read through Josie’s comment on Doug’s blog. I don’t think it suggests that openly campaigning is what this is all about.
I really could care less. In reality, I’ve enough going on in my life as a father, community member and principal without this. Right now we have an election going on in our province and I’m much more interested in that and how it could affect various parts of my life. I can see how this is important for some people and they see it as recognition for all the work they have done. Others see it as another “thing” to collect and put on the shelf - something to prove.
Sorry to all those out there, but I vote in elections. As for the awards, there are so many great blogs and writers that reducing it to a few just doesn’t do justice to the others. And if some of what is going on in the comments like found on Doug’s blog is what we get from having the awards, then I definitely don’t want any part of them. Doug shouldn’t have to put up with that just because of his opinion.
4 responses so far ↓
The thing that bothers me about the debate raging on Doug’s post is the willingness of people to second guess one another’s motives.
As much as this community has allowed us to develop relationships with one another, I don’t think we know each other well enough to be able to do anything other than take one another’s writings at face value.
When I know people really well, I feel competent to read the signals that give away what they’re really saying, but even then, I have to be physically in their presence (or at least on the phone with them) to pick up the cues.
Failing all of these conditions, I have to opt for the fall back position of assuming that Doug genuinely doesn’t want to be involved in the awards and that you genuinely don’t mind one way or the other. Anything else would be arrogance on my part.
Karyn, I agree. In a community where we rely on non-verbal cues and the power of the printed word to convey messages, we must refrain from adding our own “feelings” to the words. By doing so, we corrupt what the writer is saying. Unless there is a signal sent from the sender to indicate a particular “voice”, we need to learn to read in neutral which is very difficult to do as we all tend to interpret from our worldview.
As educators, one of our greatest skills is our ability to interpret cues from our students which allow us to gather whether they understand, are bored, are upset or are happy. Sometimes we use this skill in situations that don’t warrant it.
I really don’t mind if people want to openly campaign for votes or not to be honest. I disagree with your analysis of the edublogosphere - I think we have a lot of silos across educational blogging and online interaction, and probably in many of them you can identify the structure you picked out - a few individuals who are very well read within a constituency (or in several constituencies). However, zoom out and you’ll find a far more complex picture of people who aren’t necessarily going to show up within specific groups (whether these are national, age-based, profession or interest based) and many many different groups. Fundamentally, the awards seeks to celebrate this existing and increasing heterogeneity - this is why we’ve always been looking to get the word out as widely as possible as much as possible, why we’ve looked at ensuring on no budget that we are proactive as possible about diversity.
We do also recognize that social networking services and tools have fundamentally reconfigured web based practices - that’s why we have categories for people working in education using social networking services, virtual worlds, audio, visual, and wikis. Our Best Individual Blog winner last year - Christopher Sessums (http://elgg.net/csessums/weblog/) actually blogs within a social networking site (eduspaces).
Interesting that you refer to the adding of feelings to words. Doug has always had a penchant for emoticons to indicate the mood behind the words and to make up for the lack of visual cues within the medium (someone even picked up on that in the comments). It is obviously particularly important to him not to be misconstrued.
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