Encroaching on Education’s Beltway

Posted on | September 13, 2007 | 2 Comments

It is always nice to find a thoughtful educational blog that you haven’t come across before. Following some links on network effects in education, I landed on Jeff Vandrimmelen’s blog at EduTechie.com. My meanderings took me to a post by Jeff from January this year on The Human Education Network – in this, Jeff gives a nice mention to the entertaining videos from Cisco on their Human Network theme, but it is his outline of the questions and issues around the concept of the Web as the learning platform that makes the post such interesting reading.

One passing remark from Jeff, however, pulled me up and got me thinking:

“….bloggers have started playing a large role in politics, albeit not so much in education so far…”

US political blog network from p373

In the USA, for sure, bloggers do seem to have penetrated the Beltway, so to speak, and it is true that bloggers are having a greater and greater influence in UK politics too. But have political blogs been more successful in influencing their targeted arena than educational blogs? Do those of us who blog on education still have a way to go to achieve the levels of influence of the political blogosphere?

There will be no simple answer, of course – it will vary from country to country – and some may even disagree with the base assertion – but it’s a question worth some consideration.

Technorati Tags: political blogs, education blogs, beltway, jeff vandrimmelen

Category: education, politics

Comments

2 Responses to “Encroaching on Education’s Beltway”

Ewan McIntosh
September 13th, 2007 @ 1:37 pm

As you say, it depends where in the world you are. I think education blogs are having an increasing role in influencing policy – I know they are – indirectly and directly. However, when you get US-centricism in the blogosphere (and apparently it can happen sometimes you end up with the impression that there’s still a lot of “it should be like this” instead of people just doing it. Case in point:
http://edutopia.org/whats-next-best-blogs
A top ten of blogs with nothing outside the US? If that were your point of reference then Jeff would be spot on. Let’s hope that a ping from your blog brings over the pond to discover something a bit more aspirational and inspirational.
John Connell
September 13th, 2007 @ 2:15 pm

Interestingly blinkered post from Edutopia, indeed, Ewan – but not surprising, I guess. Your comment on that site is well made – and good to see Stephen come in with his own international list, and not a top-ten in sight!

Away from the US-centric issue, though, it is, of course, difficult to measure influence on such diffuse arenas as education or politics. I see unmistakable influence, of course, in specific areas – we both know of a small number of home-grown patches where change is being influenced in some small way at least by the kind of thinking we read (and write!) in the more progressive educational blogs around the world.

Realistically though (and this is by no means pessimistic – I’m very realistic, I believe, about the nature of change in education systems) the big picture is still one of tinkering at the edges of the school as an institution, and allowing the fundamental inertia of big systems to ensure that change, if it happens at all, is slow and piecemeal.

I like the notion in Chris Betcher’s post (see another of my posts today), that we are in a ‘Berlin Wall’ situation. Although I have not used this specific analogy before, this is a view I have shared for the longest time, that the educational status quo is unsustainable and that the walls of the school will not so much come tumbling down but will be seen as they really are – no longer relevant. If change doesn’t happen from above, it will certainly happen from below.