I’ve been tagged by Robert French for a meme making its way in the blogosphere. That’s actually a first for me (and if it’s the first time you read about blog memes, don’t worry, they are contagious, but not lethal ;-)
I thought it would be a great opportunity to highlight five of the great higher ed bloggers listed in my directory.
You already know I’m really interested in communications, marketing, Web and admissions, that’s why I also like to read blogs dealing with other areas of higher education. So, here we go in alphabetical order:
Alumni Futures: Andrew Shaindlin, Executive Director of the Caltech Alumni Association at the California Institute of Technology, hasn’t been blogging for a long time. He started last February, but he posts regularly well-researched, well-written posts targeted to professionals working in alum associations (as you will see on his blog, we share the same passion for “bolded” statements in posts for easy scanning).
Confessions of a Community College Dean: I’m a big fan of Dean Dad and wrote about his blog in the past. I love to read his posts to get a sense of what’s going on in the mind of an academic Dean. He is a great writer and also shares tidbits of his life as a dad, as well, which I found refreshing.
Higher Ed Marketing: So, this one is about marketing and not another area of higher education as mentioned above. Andrew Careaga, Director of Communications at UMR – and one of the advisory board members of Higher Ed Experts – has been blogging about higher ed marketing since November 2005. While often short, most of this posts look at the big picture. I like that.
Mistaken Goals: Kevin Guidry, an Information Technology Fellow at Sewanee: The University of the South, started to blog in November 2006. He focuses on student affairs and technology, and provides great insights on the major issues affecting his peers and our institutions.
Serendipity 35: Ken Ronkowitz works at NJIT and has been blogging since February 2006. Most of his posts deal with technology as it applies to teaching and learning.
Why don’t you add your own five picks to this selection by posting a comment?
Thanks Karine. I appreciate the vote of confidence and the compliment!
However, I don’t think I’ll make a similar post on my own blog. It simply seems too self-indulgent and off-topic for my own blog. I realize that it may be somewhat offensive and offputting to violate what appears to be a community norm but I don’t want to violate the integrity of my blog by wandering this far off-topic. I could be wrong but I don’t think my readers (both of them – hah!) come to my blog to read about other blogs or my own self-important thoughts about other blogs and bloggers and…
I’m trying really hard to avoid the echo chamber that is naturally encouraged by hypertext and blogging software and culture (blogging memes like this one, pingbacks, blog rolls, etc.). I also am trying to avoid focusing solely on resources and information available only or primarily online; as one who works in a library and works alongside archivists, I am very aware of how much is not and may never be available online.
Thanks again for the mention! I truly appreciate it and I hope you understand why I will probably not be writing a similar post (although I desperately need to update my blog roll and links to other resources).
No problem, Kevin. If it wasn’t obvious, I wasn’t exactly fishing for links with this post or I would probably have picked another blog (after all, I’m one of your 2 readers ;-).
I got tagged (a first as I explained in the post) and so I decided to take the opportunity to feature a few of the bloggers I read that are listed on my “Higher Ed Bloggers” page.
Now, I really don’t want you to “violate the integrity of your blog” if posting about people who make you think would lead to this result.
I like to think that I post about “people who make [me] think” quite often. :)
Ahem — I’d like to thank all the little people I had to step on to make my way to the top…
Thanks, Karine, for including me in the ranks of your top five. I’d certainly include you in mine. Thanks for making me think, often.
Andrew
You know I felt like Kevin at first too when I was tagged by someone else, but then I had second thoughts after meme #2, which led me to think more about it and blog again about the whole thing at the link I give here.