EduBlog Insights

The Tar Heel Bloggers (THB) are “kicking their heels” at the University of North Caroling at Chapel Hill as they promote the use of weblogs at the university.  Their site includes the following goals:

Facilitating discussion about weblogs as sources of information, news, scholarship and personal expression, with an emphasis on the uses of weblogs in the university setting.

Encouraging undergraduate and graduate students, professors and teaching assistants to utilize personal and class weblogs as a means of deepening academic research and broadening the reach of our ideas.

Sponsoring lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials and other campus events to raise awareness about Internet issues, personal publishing trends and weblogging technology.

What is really cool about this weblog initiative is that it is coordinated by student leaders.  They are setting up committees for personal weblogging and academic weblogging efforts.

Membership is open to students, staff, faculty, administrators and community members.

They have an open listserv for online conversation about weblogs as well as a website for an open directory, list of resources, how-to’s and essays.  (The listserv link did not work for me.  I’ll try again later.)  I subscribed to their listserv here.

Go Tarheels!  I really like the scope and planning that obviously went into this effort.

Congrats to Will on his 1,000th post. That is truly remarkable and what is best about it is that all of his posts are so related to making things better for students. His keeping such a clear record of his journey helps us all. I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating - Will is getting the job done and leading the pack!

There are so many weblogs appearing now. I can’t keep up! It is exciting though! While I’m handing out kudos I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Al Delgado. His EdBlogger Praxis site is outstanding. And he is helping us keep up! Not only with sites, but he provides such interesting info and is always ready to help. He has lots of other sites, too. I marvel at how organized they all are. It’s a wonderful site for educators and covers such a wide variety of educational weblogs. You’ll definitely find sites you’ll want to see.He also has sites for Manila, Radio, and MT as well. Go to his site and you can click on links to his other sites.   Thanks Al, for this tremendous resource.

Then Pat always has good things going on. I love to read what’s new. He is so enthusiastic and one day I will learn to have a well-designed site like his.  Pat will be happy to know that my badge for eBN is now up and working - better late than never, huh?  Pat is a great story-teller.  His journey this year is chocked full of details, and you really hang on to every word.  Thanks for taking us along on the journey, Pat!  Oh yes, I have to mention that I especially like his cost of the war in Iraq counter on the side.  :-)

Pam continues to get recognized for her excellent work.  She was recognized as the “Blog of the Month” on the edtechnot.com site. Teacher Magazine spotlighted Pam, Al, eBN, and some others in an article, entitled “This Time, It’s Personal”   Well deserved by all!  Pam is getting it done in the elementary world and bringing lots of teachers on-board.  I love her enthusiasm for children.  Plus she’s really in the trenches helping those first year teachers. She does all this plus teaches herself all day! She’s making a difference!

Now I know there are many others out there making a difference - but I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on these four “making a difference” webloggers.

That’s what’s great about weblogs.  I can write about others on another day……