Drape's Takes

The Wikipedia community provides a decent enough definition of the term blogosphere:

Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.

That said, I still can't wrap my head around this one:

• What is the “edublogosphere”?

I realize that the answer to this question may appear obvious on the surface, but deep within lies a beast yet to be fully discovered. These few questions illustrate what I mean.

• Is the edublogosphere a social network?
• Is the edublogosphere a social network for every member that hopes to participate?
• Do members of the edublogosphere form a community or simply a network of learners? Perhaps the term community of practice is more fitting or even pseudo-community: a stage in which many of us may find ourselves?
• Is the edublogosphere really a sub-division of the blogosphere itself or merely a concoction of those that claim to be a part of it?
• Isn't every blog post educational in at least some sense?
• How does one join the edublogosphere? Are there dues to be paid and other rites of passage? I don't remember formally joining but I'm pretty sure I'm a member of it.
  
• Are members of the edublogopshere inherently friends or does the golden rule really not apply here?
  

What do you think?

Image Source: This image is a Wordle tag cloud created from the RSS feed for the Google Blog Search of the term edublogosphere. Yeah, I thought it was odd that it placed the word community off to the side, too.

Technorati Tags: blogosphere edublogosphere community socialnetworking

As the 31-Day Commenting Challenge continues in full swing (over 120 participants at this point in time), I wonder if there aren't additional thoughts regarding commenting etiquette that have yet to be discussed.

Timeliness as it relates to comments, for example, may be an issue deserving attention.

To illustrate, I recently responded to a blog post and conversation that had taken place fifty days prior to the date I wrote my response. I prefaced my post by admitting that the post "may be late to the game." Miguel Guhlin expressed similar concern over his "tardiness" when he posted a comment related to the same aged conversation, just ten hours after I had posted about it. Whether his apology for tardiness related to my post or to the fifty-day-old conversation is irrelevant.


Conversely, there are times when people continue to comment on posts that have been tucked away in the archives for quite some time. For example, Anne Mirtschin wrote an excellent post detailing a number of things she has done in her classrooms this year in relation to cybersafety. Even though the post was written on March 27, it continues to receive comments from readers nearly six weeks later.

Similarly, a post I wrote on April 15 entitled Becoming A Better Teacher, has been sporadically commented upon since then (with the latest influx of comments coming in just a few days ago). Interestingly enough, these late comments have possibly added the most meaning to the conversation, as many of them were written by students instead of teachers.

• What are the time limits for conversation?
• Must I apologize for arriving late to a conversation - even if the conversation takes place on a medium as asynchronous as blogging?
  
• As a blogger, should I feel guilty if I don't respond to comments made to posts that have long since found a home in the archives?
• Should this idea be included in our Edublogger Etiquette discussion? If so, I would prefer to use your examples rather than mine.
• Which posts have you written (and long since archived) that still receive comments?
  

Image Source: Flickr user ani!

I’ve been tagged to participate in the latest meme. This time around we’re to identify a photo that best illustrates what we most hope that our students are able to learn.

First, a parable.

Several times every summer, our neighborhood gathers together for a little socializing and a lot of eating in the form of a community barbecue. At times these gatherings come at inopportune times, but most members of the community cheerfully participate, regardless of how busy they think they are or how long they’ve been members of our neighborhood. Why, even little ol’ Mrs. Caulkins shows up every time, ever anxious to share her favorite salad or a homemade peach pie, made especially for such an occasion. In fact, there are many times when she even hosts the barbecue – and we love her for it – because even though she’s been a part of our community for probably the longest, she loves to participate and socialize and engage in friendly conversation with fellow community members. Furthermore, when Mrs. Caulkins participates in our barbecues, many of the newcomers to our neighborhood greatly benefit from her perspective on the conversation - given that she has a wealth of experience and wisdom to offer, conveying an exciting and highly educational dimension to every conversation.

Which brings me to the concept that I wish all of my students could/would learn.


I hope that all of my students, adult and youth alike, learn that it’s important to participate in their community, even when it’s not convenient. Participating in online and face-to-face community efforts is important, not only because you might just gain something out of participating, but also because others might equally do the same – because of your participation.

Which likewise brings me to our community’s latest barbecue: The Passion Quilt meme.

The Passion Quilt meme’s rules are:

• Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.
• Echoing Sue Water's helpful request, please include your name within the photo and post it to Flickr with the passionquilt08 tag. Doing this extra step should greatly help to pull the entire meme together.

I tag the first three because I think they have a "wealth of experience and wisdom to offer", with great potential to convey "an exciting and highly educational dimension" to this conversation:

• Ian Jukes
• Stephen Downes
• Marc Prensky

I tag these last two because, as newcomers to our community, they may just get to know folks in our neighborhood a little better through participating:

• Barack Obama
• Hillary Clinton

Technorati Tags: passionquilt08 education technology community

The New York Times has included the term e-mail bankruptcy in list of buzz-words for 2007:

e-mail bankruptcy n.

What you’re declaring when you choose to delete or ignore a very large number of e-mail messages after falling behind in reading and responding to them. This often includes sending a boilerplate message explaining that old messages will never receive a personal, specific response. Although the Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig is often credited with coining this term, at best he can be said to have popularized it. Its first use was in 2002, two years before Mr. Lessig publicly declared his own e-mail bankruptcy.

Personally, I've never had the need to declare e-mail bankruptcy. In spite of the dozens of legitimate email messages I receive daily, I've managed to successfully stay on top of the onslaught (granted, I'm no Leo Laporte). Besides, what's so hard about seeing the name of the sender and then promptly pressing the *delete* key?

Twitter, though is different. You can say that again! Twitter, though, is different.

Sure Twitter is like e-mail. But there's no *delete* key, and at times it's nearly impossible to just. keep. up.

In reality, Chris Craft's recent tweets were the straw that broke the camel's back - because I honestly feel his pain and can empathize completely with his frustration. To recap:

With Twitter, it's more about conversation - or conversationS - nearly all of them quite public, varied, and ofttimes scattered. Much like @crafty184, I've found that as I follow more and more people, I'm more and more lost in the myriad of conversations. Hence:


That said:

• Please don't be offended if I don't add you to my list of Twitter friends. Don't worry, I'm still interested in hearing from you - if you're an educator, a friend, or an overall swell person - and I will hear you because...
  
• I'll be watching for direct @ddraper replies in Twitterific and through the Twitter web interface. Apparently and unfortunately, however, some of those replies sometimes fall through the cracks. Thus...
• I'll also be tracking all @ddraper replies via Sue's great tutorial - and yes, I realize that Tweet Scan is better than hashtags. Sheesh, can't I be the devil's advocate every once in a while. :)
• Finally, I think I'll stick loosely with the Hutterite philosophy regarding community size: 150's the magic number. Hey, if it's good enough for Gladwell, it's good enough for me.

Because let's face it. What good is a conversation if you're not able to follow it?

Technorati Tags: twitter hutterite email education technology 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...
  

Technorati Tags: award blogosphere community edubloggerworld twitter