Edutopia has listed their view of “top edublogs”. Stephen Downes (and others) criticizes its lack of international representation…and he (Stephen) offers his much more global and complete EduRSS list. Perhaps even more consequential than a too small sampling of blogs provided by Edutopia, is the mindsets revealed by list selection. For example, if you understand the criticality of networks in forming diverse understandings, rather than link to “a blog”, link to something that is more network like in nature - like Google Alerts on “elearning”, “pedagogy” or similar phrase, or Technorati tags and blog search. Or, better yet, ask readers to contribute to the list. I guess I see too much hierarchical, one-way thinking evident here. It’s not about getting people in touch with a few gurus…it’s about helping people form their own learning networks. Edutopia’s list reflects the mindset many of us have been addressing for years. Don’t tell us. Help us learn for ourselves. Don’t filter for us. Help us develop the skills and tools to do so for ourselves.
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George,
I agree with you, but I also like D’Arcy Norman’s list of 96 edublogs (probably because I’m actually on it).
Thanks for the comments; much appreciated.
Remember, though, that this list was meant to be nothing more than what the headline implies: Edublogs We Love. It’s not called or implied to be “Top Edublogs,” as you state. So I wouldn’t read any dark jingoism into the selections. We solicited input on favorite blogs from many folks, and these were the ones most often cited. It also isn’t a ranking, as one reader implies. It’s just, well, blogs we love. Take it at that.
But I’d say that the primary reason international blogs didn’t pop up was that, frankly, we can’t fairly judge blogs whose language we don’t understand. I wouldn’t count English-only international blogs as the scope of the foreign blogosphere. Too limiting. There may be some excellent Chinese, French, Italian, Czech, Spanish, Japanese, etc. edublogs, and - if so - please tell us about them. Sounds like you all have some ideas. We can include them in our international issue (best ideas from educational communities around the world) which will come out in February. Meanwhile, thanks for the reminder that we need to look past our own borders.
Jim Daly
Editor in Chief, Edutopia