The Top Ten Edublogs

The top ten blogs on Edublogs this week based upon traffic are:

• Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day
• Reflection 2.0
• The Edublogger
• Teaching Generation Z
• Hörbuch- und Podcast-Blog
• Mobile Learning
• Tama’s eLearning Blog
• always learning
• Betchablog
• Mobile Technology in TAFE

Discussing Twitter on Edublogs

Twitter, an online chat system, is one of the most popular social networking tools today. I thought I’d take a stroll through Edublogs to see who is discussing using Twitter and how are they using it for personal and professional needs, integrating Twitter into their blogs, and how they are incorporating Twitter into the classroom.

Betchablogs writes in “Twitter - Killer App or Overkill?” about the technical aspects of Twitter, listing interesting toys and clients for Twitter, describing it thus:

Having a likeminded group of fellow Twits from which to tap into some collective wisdom turns Twitter from a curious plaything into a rather amazing personal learning environment.

Not So Distant Future talks about “Twittering Your Way Down The Information Highway” describing it as:

Getting answers to that question on Twitter from South Korea, Australia, and here in the U.S. demonstrated to our own teachers how many “universals” there are in education, no matter where you go. And even though we had been brainstorming about this question during two days, some of the Twitterers still gave fresh answers that we hadn’t considered.

I know in my own building, perhaps teachers wonder how to find time for a tool like this or how I can find time to use it? My answer is–it saves me a tremendous amount of time. When someone comes to me with a question, if I don’t know the answer, I can throw it out to a wide network of educators in my network on Twitter, and almost always get an answer.

Techno Tuesday’s Cathy Nelson reports that Twitter is a library stuffed with information and resources which helped her preview blog posts, get advanced tips on upcoming blog posts and topics, tips to global projects, sports updates, and more. She describes it as a “cross between professional conversations and gabbing on the phone about anything.” Not long after, she credits Twitter friends as helping to save her from a nasty allergic reaction after a school remodel. Nothing like virtual life saving. :D

ICT in my Classroom has written a lot about using Twitter including an introduction to incorporating Twitter into your Personal Learning Network(PLN) and participation in the @ManyVoices Project, a “collaborative, creative writing project using Twitter” where each participating child writes an ongoing part of the story within the 140 character limit. Edublogger Tom Barrett also offers lessons in how to use Twitter better by understanding Twitter’s two networks for listening (lurking) or talking and GeoTweets - Inviting your network into the classroom, an exciting experience when Twitter and his PLN really impacted his classroom while learning geography and how to use Google Earth and Twitter.

On Frank’s Blog, also known as Faces of Web 2.0 - 21st Century Teachers, he shares Sage Lewis and 17 uses for twitter, two videos to improve your Twitter usage, and How To Use Twitter In The Classroom, which covers how the teacher and students use Twitter though class chatter, classroom community, and getting a sense of the world around them.

Mobile Technology in TAFE offers a variety of tips and techniques for using Twitter as part of your personal and professional networking, as well as how to incorporate it into your class, such as Are You Using Twitter Effectively For Your Personal Learning?, Getting More Out of Twitter, Help Me Get My Twitter Magic Back, and Tagging, Tracking and Using RSS with Twitter!

Apace of Change asks “Why Twitter?” and then answers the question well, describing the benefits of of a teacher using Twitter as:

• Network of students for sharing class resources that goes beyond social cliques
• Built-in peer support system for immediate questions about/help with work
• Easy way for me (or students) to send an “APB” or links to interesting/related sites
• Convenient multi-user communication - especially useful for group project collaboration

So enthused with the possibilities of Twitter, he started The Twitteracy Project (TTP), an expermiment in incorporating Twitter into the classroom, which ended with The Twitteracy Project is Dead, Long Live the Twitteracy Project, concluding that student motivation wasn’t high enough and logistics interfered with the project as many students had trouble using Twitter from home. Determined, he says he will attempt the experiment next semester, focusing more on getting past these two roadblocks.

Reflection 2.0 recently announced a Twitter Bookgroup where Twitter fans can recommend and read books and review and critique then. She even offers some tips and advantages of participating in such a global book group. This got the attention of eLearning Now who admits, “Finally an educational use for Twitter?” Reflection also offers some tips to help you control the overwhelming information on Twitter.

Many speak of the tremendous collaboration they get with Twitter. In a discussion on Twitter, the TeachingSagittarian asked for help finding student blogs for his students to read and comment on. The discussion led to a team effort to create YoungWriters07, a wikispace that teachers can use to find blogs to recommend to their students.

The TeachingSagittarian also featured Twitter Flickr Learning, another example of how teachers and fellow bloggers can network and correspond on Twitter, showcasing how a Twitter conversation between Chris Betcher and Sue Waters, fellow Edubloggers, resulted in a joint article comparing flickr and Picassa. He also wrote about “High Speed Conferencing thanks to Twitter“, using Twitter to create a true “un-conference” weekend stuffed with learning about software, programs, and tools to help educators without leaving the comfort of home.

The EdTech Bach also admits that Twitter helps discover neat tools to use with the web browser and Twitter, opening up a whole avenue of recommended resources from those with the experience and familiarity you need.

Jabiz Raisdana, the Intrepid Teacher, is teaching in Qatar and thought that he would never run out of blogging steam. He did and in All a Twitter, shares how Twitter brought back the inspiration and motivation for blogging, where the muses never sleep.

When Russel of Wise Provocation hit Twitter with a rant on blocking practice after a frustrating day dealing with a school system that puts such energy and money into blocking online access to viable tools and services. His Twitter friends stepped in with insightful questions and support which helped him get a better handle on his mood and thoughts about the issue.

At the Edubloggercon in the United States last year, Graham Wegner learned about how many bloggers were using Twitter to pass on educational news.

Educators I Follow on Twitter by son-of-a-ditchdigger lists the author’s favorite educators and their Twitter addresses. The list is hard to read, but if you are a Twitter fan, you might check out the list to see which educators you might want to put into your Twitter list.

Many Edubloggers linked to 30 Days with Twitter by Bob Sprankle on Moving at the Speed of Creativity as the inspiration on how Twitter could help them in their personal and professional development. At the end, he points to Twitter in the Classroom from Web 2.0 Primer, which lists examples of how many are using Twitter for educational purposes.

In a bit of Twitter fun, PodPirate Island’s Brian Van Dyck offers the Twitter 12 Step Program called Twits Anonymous (TA).

More and more edubloggers are discovering the invaluable service Twitter provides to them, as a social network, but more importantly, as a valuable tool for learning, for them and their students.

How are you using Twitter in your professional development and classroom?

So, thinking specifically about Judy, I figured that we probably need to do a couple of things, in the first case clear up a number of misconceptions about the mag and it’s purpose, and in the second (and certainly the one I’m looking forward to more) lambast anyone who is going to criticize us for promoting Edublogs or, more pertinently, being a business.

So out with the boring stuff first. Besides the monetization bit, Judy certainly seems to imply that this is an Edublogs-only -club or that it exists, ahem, for ‘the overt promotion of bloggers who use the edublogs platform’, which is of course not true. While the magazine aims to inform, engage and generally make using edublogs better for the people who do use it, contribution is open to everyone. Wanna test that out, try submitting something or giving us a few weeks at least!

And more to the point, if we want to create a magazine that serves our users, why on earth shouldn’t we be able to do so?

Oh, because apparently:

rather than creating a magazine that engages us all in the global conversation. This is an obvious commercial move at the expense of egalitarianism in blogging

You what? Who exactly handed the responsibility to us to serve a global conversation? Oh, hang on, nobody. But guess what, that’s actually what we’re trying to do, within a few boundaries obvioulsy, but best we can.

And more to the point (slipping into interesting stuff here), what exactly is this notion of egalitarianism in blogging (I thought we’d gotten over that bit of nonsense), and… drumroll… what is wrong with this being a commercial move? In fact, what is wrong with Edublogs being a commercial operation (it is) at all?

Because here’s how the magazine is commercial. It will provide (hopefully) great news, information, ideas, resources and all that jazz for edubloggers the world over. Contributors will get a decent sized audience (we’re able to promote it to a lot of people, all the ‘egalitarianism’ in the world isn’t going to get you thousands of readers a day), links back to their sites and the chance to engage in a conversation they might have struggled to get into from a central place. Existing Edublogs users will hopefully enjoy it and as a result will enjoy using Edublog even more, and hopefully some people will see the site and think ‘hey, I should get myself an edublog’ or ‘let’s check out this Edublogs Campus thing’.

Which will, in turn hopefully help us to continue to grow and develop Edublogs as a whole. Because as I said, that’s what we want to do, both to provide a great tool for teachers and students (that’s ad free, unlike the platform Judy uses that plasters adsense all over the site, surreptitiously) and to put food on our tables.

I really want institutions to sign up for Edublogs Campus - besides being a bloody great platform (and incredibly affordable by regular hosted elearning tools standards) which I’m hoping is going to be able to evolve into an approach to online teaching and learning that revolutionizes our current tawdry practice-by-platform, it also (kinda) pays the bills.

And I’m dead keen that users sign up for free Edublogs, first up you’ll love the features (I promise, we’re way ahead of other blog providers in many ways) but also because we offer, and are going to extend, paid upgrades that will give you pretty much everything you could possibly want out of a blog… for a tiny fraction of the price you’d pay if you hosted it yourself… and also because that pays for the petrol to drive my kinds to school.

So what do our users get for this? Well, you could say brilliant, free, advertising free, supported, evolving online teaching and learning tools and community. Sheesh.

And if we didn’t commercialize this properly, as Stephen pointed out rather bloody well in regards to projects like elgg (and we all know what happened to eduspaces) and as Tom Hoffman noted at the time, services without supporting business models will not make it.

Really, what I’d like to see is the people who criticize us for commercialization or ’selling out’ do three things:

1. Put yourself in our shoes, remember that this, along with Incsub, is my full time job, it’s what I do for a living and what tens of thousands of educators seem to find useful…. what would you do?

2. Next time you’re out grocery shopping, and you pop into your specialty store (organic, really nice fruit and veg, butchers etc.), make sure you don’t miss the opportunity to tell them what you think of them for making money out of you bu giving you what you want in exchange for $.

3. Get a grip fer heavens sake: “There is real danger it might be destroying the open collaborative environment of blogging around the world… please reconsider the marketing of this magazine…for the sake of our students. (Oh I know it won’t happen - not everyone puts the needs of our kids first!)” Leave the invective up to the pros ;)

We wanted to feature bloggers and news from within the Edublogs Network represented by Edublogs, Learnerblogs, Uniblogs, and ESLblogs.

We wanted to provide a place where Edublog members could publish articles offering their special insights into education today, past, and the future of online education technologies.

We wanted to bring in educational experts and professionals to provide insights into their specialties for educators and students around the world, as well as the Edublogs community.

We also wanted to get help from top blogging professionals on how to blog from a personal and professional perspective.

It’s a big to do list, but we’re very excited about how we’ve brought it all together under one roof.

Currently, the Edublogs Magazine feature the following post categories on:

• Edublogs News features the news, information, and resources found around the Edublogs community of bloggers.
• Blogging Students covers examples and interviews of students using blogs to communicate, learn, teach, fundraising, and more.
• Blogging Teachers will showcase teachers using blogs and online technologies in their classrooms and life, having their say about the state of education.
• Online Education looks at the industry and technology of online education and distance learning, bringing the classroom directly to the student.
• Pedablogy is about the arts and sciences of teaching blogging and blog technology.
• Professional Development covers training programs, workshops, conferences, special events, and news about professional education development.
• Teaching Technologies offers articles on how on teaching technologies, how to teach, how to teach specific subjects, and products and services that may improve teaching techniques and skills.
• Blogging Tips offers tips, tricks, and techniques on blogging, invaluable to the blogger or the teacher teaching blogging and web technologies.
• Multimedia covers integrating modern multimedia technologies into blogs, websites, classrooms - all aspects from podcasting to moblogging.

You can subscribe to these individually, or to the Edublogs Magazine Feed, or choose from other alternative subscription methods on our Subscribe page.

We’d love your input and contributions, so we’ve set up Contributor’s Guidelines on how to submit articles to the magazine. You can contact us directly by email at Edublogs Magazine.

As I went prowling around Edublogs and edubloggers in general, here are some of the juicy tidbits I turned up.

Educon 2.0: There is a lot of talk about Educon 2.0 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 25-27, 2008. It’s an education conference that explores the future of schools, especially where teaching mets reality on the ground, not fantasy. Are you attending? Been blogging about it? You can track more information on the event through Hitchhikr.

Educating the Edublogger on Edublogs: Sue Waters on The Edublogger has been turning out the tutorials for Edublog users. So far, she’s released How To Add Your Photo to Your Blog Side Bar, Tips For Doing A Blog Makeover, and Getting More Out of Widgets!

Release of the Horizon Report: It’s the talk of the edublogosphere. It’s the 2008 Horizon Report (pdf). Rumors are that we’ll have a summary of it here on Edublogs Magazine soon. Stay tuned.

Hiding Behind Your Blog: Cool Cat Teacher showcases a teacher brave enough to tell the school principle that she had a blog, and it turned out great!. This is a topic near and dear to Cool Cat’s heart as she says in Why Should You have to Hide Behind Your Blog. There are still a lot of teachers fearful of reprecussions, and there is nothing wrong in blogging anonymously, as long as you are doing it for the right reasons. It’s a tough call. What do you think? Are you blogging about this? Does everyone know who you are behind your blog?

Flat World, Ebooks, and Flickr and the Library of Congress: This week, Kevin’s Meandering Mind covers Two Million Minutes in the Flat World, the book by Tom Friedman and a documentary on the emergence of math and science in China and India and, the concern about lack of these skills in the US. An interesting combination of perspectives on the subject. He also brings up ebooks and the announcement that the US Library of Congress has joined with Flickr to put thousands of photos from its archives up on Flickr.

An Educational Resource a Day: Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day covers sites for learning more about language studies, specifically ELL, ESL and EFL. This week’s goodies include Schoolr, Student Self-Access To Websites Of The Year, The Best Websites For Intermediate Readers, Last Day For Educational Blogging Survey, Songza, Vocabulary Games, Evaluating Teachers, Tour Through Time, The Best Websites For Beginning Older Readers, and Medline Plus, among many others. His site recommendations cover the gamut and are helpful for all teachers and students.

Flixn, Martin Luther King, and Interesting Class on Copyrights: Yes Tech! had a teacher with a new webcam asking about how to use Flixn and gives a few insights. In honor of the holiday, some web resources on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are offered along with a very strange lesson in Weird Al Gives Lesson About Copyright.

Learning to Teach and Blog: Reflection 2.0 is about Kate Olson, a new teacher, and she makes a good point in her post on finding interesting web tools each week, Jing + Tumblr = Great Day, about the frustration of images not fitting within the WordPress Theme. In theory, WordPress Theme designers are supposed to take image width and column width into account in their designs but they don’t always. Remember, WordPress blogs automatically give you a choice of a thumbnail version or full-size version of all images you upload to your blog. Other posts by Kate included Humbled by a Widget and Learning As I Go, more lessons learned along the blogging way. Good for you, girl! Keep learning. We love learning with you.

Teachers Training Teachers Presents Spin The Globe: Graham Wegner of Teaching Generation Z was invited to be on the Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast with Doug Noon recently discussing their project, Spin The Globe.

Bringing Blogs to Elementary Students and Wired Wednesdays on Always Learning: Always Learning has started offering the details on helping elementary students learn how to blog. In Learning to Blog: The Elementary Way and Blog Pals: Adventures in Blogging With Third Grade, some great tips, course outlines, and advice is offered to help others bringing in blogs to the classroom. In The Technology Toolbox: Choosing the Right Tool for the Task, the author creates a chart that shows which tool is the right one for the task. A work in process, it’s a great start to helping other teachers figure out if a blog, social networking, or other web tool is the right one for their project. Another exciting announcement came in the post about The Future of Learning in a Networked World which covers the Teach and Learn Online organization from Australia and New Zealand, and includes the announcement that every Wednesday will be “Wired Wednesdays” where the Professional Development program will host an after-school PD session on the whys of 21st century living. How exciting!

Being a Globally Connected Teacher, Child Safety on the Web, and Comparing Schools from 1977 to 2007: Chris of Betchablog recalled the magic of being a “globally connected teacher” in In Real Life, detailing the power of social media like Twitter, Skype, and blogs to connect with people all over the world. In Data lives Forever, we get another lesson that children have to learn early “the full implications of something as seemingly harmless as putting their photo online. They often don’t realise that, just like The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, once something goes online it is near impossible to remove it.” Chris continues with Wrapped in Cotton Wool about the struggles of keeping children safe on the web while allowing them access to modern technology. In an interesting “joint post” with Sue Waters of The Edublogger, they wrote Making your photos worth 1000 words about integrating Flickr with Picasa. To lighten things up for the new year, Chris shares a funny email called School 1977 vs. School 2007. It’s funny because it is so right on.

Bringing Cell Phones to School - Principals Insist! Leonard Low of Mobile Learning talked about Principals Trying out Cell Phones, summarizing it with:

Wow. Educators having a dialogue with students and discussing mobile phone manners and ethics? Might those students get insights into the acceptable use of mobile technologies (useful for the rest of their lives, no less) that they wouldn’t otherwise get from a blanket ban on mobiles at school?

He continues with his fascination with Barcodes in ZXing Open Source Barcode Library discussing ZXing, an open source Google Code project that he says could become one of the most flexible readers available. He also talks about how to create a free SMS auto-reply learning tool which allows students to SMS and receive “on-demand learning and support information on their mobile phones” which is a nice round off for the week with his most recent article on principles and cell phones.

Exploring Educon: The blogger at Not So Distant Future is starting a series of post on the Educon conference, including “Conversations That Matter“, a look at what many considered an excellent session by Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez on “Influence Without Authority” which looked at the Future Search process. Earlier, the blogger covered the issue of personal learning networks and moving them into the professional practice of teachers in “Keeping It Real” which seems to be a hot topic around the edubloggers circles lately.

This is just the first of many walks around Edublogs looking for what our favorite bloggers are covering. If you have a bit of Edublogs gossip to add, please contact us at please Edublogs Magazine.

Graham Wegner of Teaching Generation Z has been nominated twice for the Edublog Award in 2006 and 2007. Wegner, of Adelaide, Australia, is a primary school educator and has been teaching for 21 years and online since 1996. His blog covers teaching thoughts, philosophies, blogging, and observances and interaction with the Australia public school system.

The other winners were top notch educational blogs including Reader’s Choice Award Winner Study Hacks, Editor’s Choice Eduwonk, and Editor’s Choice Runner Up HackCollege. You can see the voting results and the list of all the great nominees for the Best Education Blog Award on Performancing.