Dinner with James Farmer – creator of “edublogs.org” November 22, 2006
Posted by Joseph Papaleo in AGQTP/AISV, Ed Blogger, Personal, blogs.trackback
I have only been blogging for a few months (first heard about blogs and wikis in 2003, did lots of research, but never took the plunge to get involved). Within my first week, I tested a couple of blog sites and settled on edublogs.
In my first few weeks as an edublogger, I discovered that the creator of edublogs, James Farmer, did a seminar in Australia. This was very exciting as I had assumed he must have travelled all the way from the US or UK to do this seminar. I had a look at his blog and read that he would be getting up very early to watch his new country, Australia, play in the soccer World Cup. “Wow! He’s Australian!!” I thought to myself.
I kept reading his blog and discovered that he worked at one of the biggest newspapers in Melbourne, my home city. Wow!!
I contacted James and it turns out that he actually lives 5 minutes away from the home that I had just purchased. Talk about a small world.
James has agreed to do a talk at my workplace next week (as part of the AGQTP/AISV project I am leading) and so we met face to face and had dinner to chat about it and other blog stuff. I must admit that I was quite nervous and tired as I’ve just finished reports and preparing this presentation at the same time.
Sitting and chatting with James was invigorating. To hear about:
- his journey into blogging and creating edublogs and his future plans were quite exciting (and it is not for me to tell, you’ll just have to wait!!).
- how he hosted the recent k12onlineconference and other people’s sites.
- how there are 30,000 teachers using his edublogs site and it is doubling every 6 months.
- how looking after edublogs is both rewarding and despicable (the people who bag him for problems should have a good look at themselves – it is a free service he is providing after all)
James has a background in philosophy and as an ESL teacher at various universities, hence his interest in creating blogs for ESL students and unistudents and teachers. His philosophical background shone through last night as he made me think about a range of issues (man, I was too tired to think through some of his phiolosophical thoughts last night).
One thing is for certain. I’ve hired the right person to challenge some of our policy setters at our school to look at the way we may deliver education in the future. I’d love to know what they will say to each after the presentation
Thanks James.
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