February 24, 2005
The Long Tail of the Expanding AECT Conversation
David, Thanks are to you for joining the conversation and for the kind words!
I believe that the critical mass of topical variety is the lack of critical mass that we must address.
Yes, that is my point exactly when I say it is a matter of critical mass. There are always lurkers in any information sharing effort. It is only when enough people are participating that the real since of community begins to form. See my post about classroom discussion boards for a few of my thoughts on this topic.
I believe, is that the conversation within the blogosphere thus far has been two dimensional - it has been more focused on the technological aspects of improving education and has not had much depth as far as broader theories of learning and instruction are concerned. This is not conducive to bringing in those who are not interested in the technology for technology's sake.
It is funny that you say this because I was just out perusing unexplored corners of the blogosphere and have really begun to discover that most bloggers do not care about the technology itself. There are a couple of reasons why I believe this is the case. I think that those of us in the ed tech sphere have gravitated toward the people we might have originally heard about or learned from as bloggers. And second, many of these people were the early adopters, which meant they were focused more on the technology itself. Because they have been around so long, their blogs consistently rise to the top of the rankings when searching blogs. I am not saying that they are not worthwhile reading because I love tech and non-tech stuff.
There is, however, great diversity in the long tail of blogging. While it takes a bit more digging to get to those bloggers, that is where some of the really important discussions (or monologues) are occurring.
That being said, many of the well-known names in our field are still sitting on the sidelines...
Posted by Rovy at February 24, 2005 7:13 PM