Lost in a blog - @ Work - Weblogs - Directory

T+D, Nov, 2002 by William Powell

By now, you've probably heard a thing or two about Weblogs or blogs, as the kids call them. But for many people, first experiences with these online journals are underwhelming. The Weblog is supposed to be about community, peer-to-peer interaction, but in most cases the community is so tight, or so unfamiliar, that the blog holds little to no interest for the casual visitor.

So, where's your community, and where are the voices that speak to you, your profession, and your interests? With more than a half-million Weblogs out there, it can be difficult to separate the neat from the daft. There is no quick way to search for Weblogs by content. There are, however, a few sites that will help you get in touch with like-minded folks.

Portal.eatonweb.com ** portal.etonweb.com "the original blog portal," lists nearly 7000 Weblogs by popularity, interest, and location. It currently lists 69 blogs relating to education, and another 102 sites dedicated to education and research.

Another popular site is BlogStreet.com ** blogstreet.com. This site offers a search function that lets users enter the URL of a blog and then gives them a list of related blogs based on a Weblog's blogroll, which is a collection of links to other Weblogs.

A similar phenomenon to the Weblog is the Webring, which is a specialized blog that groups Websites around one topic. WebRing.com is a portal for these sites ** webring.com. It currently lists 63,000 rings with links to more than 1 million active sites. However, the distance-learning section of Webring currently lists a comparatively small 25 rings. But, hey, that's better than nothing.

Education-related Weblogs, especially those focusing on the corporate environment, are still a nascent community in the blogging and Webring world. Most are less than two years old. But this small group of edubloggers, as they call themselves, is dealing with some serious issues in an informal way. Here's a selection of their blogs.

Edublog WebRing. If you've ever considered integrating a Weblog into one of your classes, this Webring's community of teachers, technologists, and librarians has invaluable advice on tap. It's moderated by Sarah Lohnes, a technical instruction and support specialist for the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College ** http://alterego.manilasites.com.

Weblogg-ed. Weblogg-ed is maintained by Will Richardson, a high school teacher living in New Jersey. He describes it as "my place to collect ideas for Weblogs in the classroom, to ask questions to the teacher Weblogging community, and to reflect on my reaching." Richardson's blog is a clearinghouse for sites and issues relating to Weblogs in education ** weblogg-ed.com.

DV for Teachers. Created by Tim Merritt, this blog focuses on the utilization of digital video in education. Merritt works with digital video at the Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education at Georgia State University ** http://dvforteachers.manilasites.com.

Elearningpost. Elearningpost is a digest of daily links to articles and news stories on such topics as corporate learning, instructional design, and knowledge management. The site ** www.elearningpost.com includes special reports.

Seblogging. Created by Sebastian Fiedler, a consultant on Web usability, information architecture, and educational design, this blog has a strong community of edubloggers, many of whom have their own Weblogs. Fiedler rants and trades thoughts with a host of contributors on Weblogs, CMSs, and dynamic Web publishing for learning and education ** http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com.

EdGames blog. EdGames is moderated by Bernie Dodge, a professor in the education technology department at San Diego State University. The EdGames blog covers the "musings and discoveries by the EDTEC 670 learning community." EDTEC 670 is a university course that covers exploratory learning through education and games; ** http://edweb.sdsu.edu/Courses/EDTEC670/index.html.> I've only listed a handful of blogs here, but just by visiting those you'll enter a community made up of hundreds of interlinked voices sounding out through the fog of the Web. Take the time to visit at least one. You might even feel compelled to contribute--or start your own blog.

For anyone in the field of education and training, a favorite book is a cherished possession. But as the song goes, "If you love someone, set them free...."

RELATED ARTICLE: Free Free, Set Them

That's the basic premise behind BookCrossing.com ** bookcrossing.com. The site is the creation of Rick Hornbakers HumanKind Systems, a software and Internet development company based in Kansas City, Missouri. The catch with this site is that you hope your beloved book never comes back to you. Users register a book at the site, print out a label that explains the process, attach, and then leave the book in an area where it's likely to be picked up.

Sounds crazy, right? Who would want to give away a perfectly good book? Well, so far 16,000 people have registered with the service and 38,000 books have been registered and released.