Hopping out of the Walled Garden

When I started 'Not a Blog' on iBerry about two years ago I was very diffident about blogging and I warbled, "I'm dubious about devoting time and energy to blogging as such. In setting up the News Aggregator I've looked at quite a few educational blogs. Some are fascinating and endless hours can be spent reading them but I've no particular wish, or more accurately the knowledge, to join the crowd and sound off on the educational topics of the day. So, not a blog, and I've no idea whether or not I will continue this exercise." But I did continue, though for the most part, just to provide a record of development for myself and others contributing to iBerry. But now I think my attitude then was a bit wrong-headed. For most bloggers, blogging is its own reward and it does force a better formulation of ideas than just keeping them in your head or even jotting them down in the excellent Google Notebook. The fact that few people read the average blog, let alone leave comments on it, is not quite the point. They just might and this usually imposes some discipline on the writer. Also, it's become increasingly obvious to me that a lack of knowledge of the educational topics of the day is no barrier to sounding off about them! This makes me less hesitant to pontificate and I've even considered changing the blog title but for reasons of continuity and probably a lack of imagination, 'Not a Blog' will remain for the time being.

Hopping over the iBerry wall to Blogger fits in well with current plans for iBerry itself. The walls, and they were never very high, are coming right down as we attempt to distribute our efforts by strengthening links with other parts of the Open Global Education Network. It's too early to be definitive about all this but one early initiative involves some experiments in network representation using mindmaps. Also, we are trying to identify a very small number of sites that can reliably deliver up-to-date educational resources with expert authority in specific academic subject areas. This will take time and any suggestions and help is greatly appreciated - please contact us or leave a comment.