Like most who would read this blog using an aggregator, I spend the majority of my time reading educational blogs and sources. But who else do you read? How diverse are your feeds?
I keep a list of librarians, administrators and other school related bloggers in my aggregator, not because I’m particularly interested but I like to be able to show others what is possible. If we believe that students will be able to transfer the experiences and skills associated with blogging, we need examples of real world of bloggers that cross cultural, societal and vocational lines. Do you know of blogging doctors? lawyers (beside Larry Lessig)? mechanics? parents? plumbers? store owners? car salesman?
My list of non-educational bloggers is pretty weak. Here are a few:
- Dave Weinberger: technologist and commentator (this one really doesn’t count)
- Scott Hodge: Pastor from Chicago. Stumbled across his blog a year or so ago and enjoy his passion for Starbucks coffee and his church
- Freakonomics:authors of the best selling book continue to see the world from a very different perspective.
This list isn’t very diverse. Is yours? Does your mechanic blog?
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October 30th, 2006 at 9:16 am
My mechanic does not blog, though one time I made a podcast for him
http://cogdogblog.com/2005/09/20/podcast-for-my-auto-mechanic/
I cannot say I have a lot of “outside” bloggers in the aggregator, beyond the groups you mentioned, I track a number of visual/information designers– really like Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/
I like the videos and podcasts from TEDTalks:
http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/
especially to stretch my awareness to world issues.
Most of the car salesmen/plumber sites I have glanced at are splogs
October 31st, 2006 at 11:28 am
I doubt that most mechanics blog (I don’t have a mechanic, so I have to generalize) but this does not mean they work in isolation from each other.
That’s why events like the Atlantic Nationals fascinate me.
Now this may be a conference, nothing like blogging, but doesn’t a restored car feel like a blog, or some such thing? I think that there is this sense of connection, this sense of communicating with each other.
Before the internet, office workers had their rolodexes. Doctors went out to the golf course on Tuesday afternoons. I would venture to say every discipline had its own ‘blog’, though the mechanisms for these would vary greatly.
What we are looking at is not new. Only the technology is, and the way the technology democratizes it.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Stephen,
Great point so the question might have been “Do mechanics connect/network using technology?” The flickr example is one, I’m curious to see how other vocations are connecting globally. I’m not so much interested in closed groups but networks.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4126240905912531540&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en
Is that happening in other vocations and if so, I think as educators we ought to be paying attention.
The doctor on the golf course may not have connected beyond his usual group. This is why the technology makes a difference. Teachers use to have staff rooms and conferences. We don’t need those anymore to engage in professional discussions.
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