Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

A great way to catch up on your edublog reading

It’s drawing toward the end of 2008, and that means (among many other things, of course) it’s time for the 2008 EduBlog Awards. In addition to voting for blogs in the 16 categories this year, I encourage you to read all the posts in the category “Most Influential Edublog Post 2008.” These include:

The future of online learning – 10 years on
Becoming a more reflective Individual Practitioner
Why Can’t Inner City Kids Learn
The Glass Bees
Planning to share versus just sharing
The Time is Now
Be an elearning action hero
President-elect Barack Obama
The truth is Out There
The New Digital Divide?
Order for Closure
Getting our Knickers in a twist?
The Macgyver Project: Genomic Dna Extraction And Gel Electrophoresis Experiments Using Everyday Materials Monkey Business
Ten Tips for Growing Your Learning Network

I’m sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else reading this post [wry smile], but I frequently feel VERY “behind” on conversations that are taking place and new developments happening in the world of educational technology. Thankfully my Google Reader Education feeds are always just a click away on my iPhone, and that is now the device I use for a large portion of my daily blog-text consumption. Still, life is busy and fast, and the number of conversations as well as voices “out here” in the blog ether continues to multiply. This is a good trend, and one I’m happy to both see and support, but it certainly can be cognitively challenging.

In this environment, I think the EduBlog awards can play a helpful and constructive role in amplifying our collective attentions on posts as well as blogs which may not have crossed or made it onto our attention radar screens YET.

We've picked something up on radar!
Creative Commons License photo credit: Don Solo

I know the annual awards draw a fair bit of criticism from some quarters, but I really don’t have an axe to grind on that front. From what I know, the nomination process is very open, and admirable efforts are taken to try and make the voting process as fair and equitable as possible. My only disappointment this year in the awards is that so few blogs were nominated in the “Best Class Edublog 2008” category. Certainly some fantastic class blogs are on that list, but there are lots more out there that should be there too. I suppose I can shoulder some of the blame for that, as can everyone else, because we should have taken the time to nominate more outstanding class blogs in that category.

I’m rather embarrassed to realize just how many of the blog posts linked above in the “most influential post” category I have NOT seen or read yet. I feel so “out of it!” Yet there is hope. The 2008 EduBlog Awards are here, and our winter holidays in North America are just around the corner. In addition to Clayton Christensen’s book “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns,” I’m adding all of the posts above to my holiday reading list which I haven’t read yet. If these are prospectively the most influential edublog posts of the past year, I certainly don’t want the year to end without allowing the thoughts and links of these authors to influence my mind and thinking!

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