A Bevy of 21st C. Learning Blogs

by Clay Burell

Published March 18, 2009 @ 11:35PM PT

Below are a handful of blogs I've long been meaning to plug for their ideas about 21st century education, most with a heavy emphasis on using technology to improve learning. If you subscribe to their RSS feeds, you'll soon learn that what starts with technology quickly spreads to ideas about its implications for wide-ranging school reform.

• The Big Kahuna of 21st century teaching and learning, Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed: Learning with the read/write web. (New Jersey, USA)
• Scott McLeod's Dangerously Irrelevant : Ruminations on technology, leadership, and the future of our schools.
• Leader Talk: The first group blog by school leaders for school leaders, LeaderTalk expresses the voice of the administrator in this era of school reform. (USA)
• Stephen Downes' OLDaily (daily or weekly web roundup of all things educational, technological, and e-learning - subscribe to newsletter here) (Canada)
• David Warlick's 2 Cents' Worth: Teaching and learning in the new information landscape.
• Wesley Fryers' Moving at the Speed of Creativity: Addresses a range of topics related to education, technology integration, distance learning, and twenty-first century literacy.
• Steve Hargadon's Classroom 2.0 - a social network of thousands of educators sharing ideas, collaborating, and engaging in self-selected professional development on the Ning platform.
• Karl Fisch's The Fischbowl: A staff development blog for Arapahoe High School teachers exploring constructivism and 21st century learning skills.
• Alec Couros' Open Thinking: personal reflections and resources related to teaching and learning, democratic media, critical media literacy, digital citizenship, openness, and social justice. (Canada)
• Doug Noon's Borderland: Educating people for a democratic society is cultural work. Teachers must become border crossers. We need to be creatively flexible because even if curriculum is standardized, our students are not. (Doug is a regular guest-blogger on Education.Change.org) (Alaska, USA)
• Konrad Glogowski's Blog of Proximal Development : Adolescent literacy, the use of technology in education, and, specifically, 21st century literacies and the impact of Web 2.0 tools on literacy development. (Canada)
• Gary Stager's Stager-to-Go: the place where a professor, teacher educator and journalist can share personal views unassociated with his various clients or employers. (See Gary's professional website here) (California, USA)
• Kim Cofino's Always Learning: a place to reflect on her teaching and learning as the 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School Bangkok in Thailand. (Bangkok)
• Jeff Utecht's The Thinking Stick: Elementary Technology & Learning Coordinator, ed-tech evangelist for Asian international schools. (Bangkok, Thailand)
• Dean Shareski's Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech: "Teachers and students ought to use technology to connect ideas and learners in safe, relevant, authentic ways to answer questions, share ideas and develop community. Learning can be fun and personal." (Canada)
• Vicki Davis' Cool-Cat Teacher: "Teaching content with new tools and enthusiasm." (Georgia, USA)
• Principal Barry Bachenheimer's A Plethora of Technology: "This blog is not really about technology. It is about teaching and learning. It is dedicated to giving educators a place to gain thought provoking ideas, web links, teaching suggestions, and a place for the author to vette out ideas."  (New Jersey, USA)
• Judy O'Connell's Hey Jude: An Australian librarian "fascinated by emerging technologies, innovation with Web 2.0, and what this all means for schools and school libraries." (Australia)

That's more than enough for anybody to swim in. I'm sure I'll kick myself for omissions and oversights later, but in my defense, I've been out of the loop in this sphere for the last year, since I'm on sabbatical, and even moreso since jumping into politics and policy matters in this space. And there are now tens of thousands of educators blogging out there.

Feel free to add your own recommendations below.

Image by Kyle Wegner