Drape's Takes: Bloggers Who Create Community

Bloggers Who Create Community

Sue Waters from the Mobile Technology in TAFE blog presented me with the Bloggers Who Create Community Award! The purpose of this award is to show gratitude to bloggers whose focus is on building communities.

Here is what Sue had to say:

Lets be honest — giving Darren an award, with any type of rule attached, is a frightening thought because he is well known for changing rules and is incredible funny. But those who know him well would agree he totally deserve this award for all his edublogger community support and his work with the Global Open Professional Development - Social Software in the Classroom. I am humbled by Darren’s incredible diplomatic skills in the global community.

Sue, you are one that really deserves the award. The example you have set for teachers throughout Australia and the rest of the world is highly commendable. Therefore, thank YOU for making our community far more worthwhile.

Tracing the award back, I was able to find a number of extremely fascinating stories from people around the world:

Sue Waters - Perth, Australia
Michele Martin - Pennsylvania, United States
Beth Kanter - New York, United States
Roger Carr - Virginia, United States
Laura - New York, United States?
Susan Reynolds - Washington, D.C., United States
Tiv - Red Sox Nation, United States
Christine Swint - Georgia, Unites States
Jo Hemmant - United Kingdom
Juliet Wilson - Edinburgh, Scotland - Somewhere in here, the award was renamed from the True Blue Blogging Award to the Bloggers Who Create Community Award
Nà - Italy
Fiona - Cambridgeshire, England

At which point I lose interest (or time, rather) in following the trail. Nevertheless, in perusing the list alone you're able to glimpse how very small our world has become - and how different community is today from yesterday. Yesterday, community was generally local. Today, it's global.

In order to conform to rules established by previous award recipients, I will now list three bloggers (among many) that I have found to be tremendous in their abilities to build community.

Bloggers Who Create Community

Steve Hargadon

I doubt that anyone would argue with me when I say that Steve Hargadon has done more to encourage and enable community among educators - or at least online community in the form of social networking - than any other person. The creator of Classroom 2.0 and a number of other educational social networks, I would be surprised if Steve's full name isn't Steve Community Hargadon.

The Alec Couros / Dean Shareski Twitter Tag Team

I'm amazed at how well these two Twitterlebrities are able to include others in their conversations and connections. Whether it's a quick ad-hoc session to learn a new tool or just a simple conversation, these two are ever willing to share and include others. Alec and Dean represent many bloggers in my Twitter community that make being a part of Twitter educational, enjoyable, and veritably rewarding. One of Dean's policies related to both his blog and Twitter, for example, speaks highly to this end:

Another new policy: anyone who takes the time to comment on my blog, I automatically follow in twitter. It only seems fair.

Lisa Durff

Durff is absolutely amazing. Sincere and genuine, I'm so appreciative of how well she is able to include others in learning throughout the communities with which she participates. I've said it before and I'll say it again: We need to clone Durff and place several copies in every school around the world.

Runners Up

Now, it appears that one of the purposes in passing along this award is to thank others - that have been so effective in promoting community - for their efforts. Thus, I would be remiss if I didn't continue to list a few more bloggers - in no particular order - for whom I am grateful.

Robin Ellis - Thanks, Robin, for all of the time you've spent to further the cause. For those of you that don't already know, Robin is continually promulgating community throughout her many circles.
Patrick Higgins - Thanks for promoting community among your teachers in New Jersey as well as throughout the world (we'll boost your new Technorati ranking just yet).
Jennifer Jones - Thanks for the hilarious tweets. I'm actually kind of glad that you caved. +10pts.
Suzanne - Thanks for your efforts in promoting community among those at EduBloggerWorld.
Stephanie Sandifer - Thanks for being such a great example for edubloggers, teachers, and principals alike - in Texas and throughout the blogosphere.
Chris Brogan - I've got to say thanks, personally, for your Google Reader shared items - in addition to thanking you for taking the time to so effectively promote community. I don't know how you find it all, but the items you share are fantastic.
And, of course, the list could go on and on and on...