Voting is Open for the 2009 Edublog Awards – Go Vote!
Voting ends Wednesday December 18th. Yes even you library people. You’ll find some great new blogs to read and trust me there are names in there you’ll recognize!
The Edublog Award Categories….
- Best individual blog
- Best individual tweeter
- Best group blog
- Best new blog
- Best class blog
- Best student blog
- Best resource sharing blog
- Most influential blog post
- Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
- Best teacher blog
- Best librarian / library blog
- Best educational tech support blog
- Best elearning / corporate education blog
- Best educational use of audio
- Best educational use of video / visual
- Best educational wiki
- Best educational use of a social networking service
- Best educational use of a virtual world
- Lifetime achievement
My Nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards
My Nominations for The 2009 Edublog Awards are:
Best individual tweeter – Marianne Lenox and her blog
Best new blog - Emergent by Design by Venessa Miemis
Best resource sharing blog – Librarian in Black
Best librarian / library blog – The Unquiet Librarian by Buffy Hamilton
Deadlines for nominations is Tuesday 8 December! Then the voting begins, ending Wednesday 16 December! Award Ceremony: Friday 18. So make your nominations today! PS there are more categories than I listed.
Found out about the Awards on Information Wants to Be Free
Commentary On the Digital Divide from the Chief Executives of Netflix & CommonSenseMedia
If you’re thinking about transliteracy you almost have to be thinking about the digital divide. What does it mean? Is it real? How will we close the gap?
This New York Times piece Will the Digital Divide Close by Itself? From the Google’s Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age provides a look at and arguments about the digital divide from two different perspectives.
From Jim Steyer, chief executive of CommonSense Media and co-sponsor of the event
“every kid needs to be digitally literate by the 8th grade” and called for a major public education campaign to make that happen. He argued that technology and learning are synonymous and that schools, parents, and kids must get up to speed in the next five years.
On the other hand:
Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of Netflix, contradicted him directly, saying it would take well more than five years to bridge the divide.
Mr. Hastings, an avid education philanthropist and proponent of school reforms, argued that at the advent of any new technology — television, cars, even rockets — people get riled up and wring their hands over a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.
He said that gaps narrow naturally as the market evolves and prices drop, enabling more people to bring new technology into the home and schools.
Most interestingly:
“We need to shift our expectations,” Mr. Hastings said. “This is a natural part of the evolution of technology.”
If I understand this correctly he is saying that the digital divide is part of an evolutionary process where technology and access to technology will be ubiquitous. I’m not sure I make the connection.
Most importantly:
Failed school reform might point to the need for more efforts outside of the classroom.
This is where libraries need to step in. We need to help students close the digital divide because what that means, what were talking about is the same thing as transliteracy. Becoming transliterate closes the digital divide. If schools can’t or wont, libraries need to step forward. We’ve done it for years with literacy, we need to do it now with transliteracy.
More on transliteracy:
- Libraries and Transliteracy
- Transliteracy group on Ning - there’s a special forum for librarians, but you’re welcome anywhere in the group
- Transliteracy Research Group
- Transliteracies Project
Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy Warns of “Second Class Citizens” in the Digital Age
The Knight Foundation has released a new report Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. A good deal of the content either is or could be applies to libraries. The entire report is 148 pages, you can also download a 2 page summary that includes recommendations like these
- 2: Increase support for public service media aimed at meeting community information needs. Read more …
- 6: Integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements of education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials. Read more …
- 7: Fund and support public libraries and other community institutions as centers of digital and media training, especially for adults. Read more …
- 10: Support the activities of information providers to reach local audiences with quality content through all appropriate media, such as mobile phones, radio, and public-access cable. Read more …
- 12: Engage young people in developing the digital information and communication capacities of local communities. Read more …
- 14: Emphasize community information flow in the design and enhancement of a local community’s public spaces.. Read more …
- 15: Ensure that every local community has at least one high-quality online hub. Read more …
The Foundation has also taken actions that affect libraries:
$3.3 million to improve free, public Internet access in libraries in 12 communities
$2.28 million in broadband access projects in underserved neighborhoods in three cities


