I honestly hope you succeed!!! An umbrella for Edublogs is a great thing and I think your new magazine can/will fulfill that role.

As far as joining the lemmings, it seems to me they also jump off cliffs at the end…(humor). We will see, maybe I will go back to using a W/P blog??? Time will tell.

I wish you the best of luck and I hope that this venture is profitable for you both and I noticed that you had 2 more new blogs today. Keep them coming. — Harold

hshawjr: Wow, I’m always amazed at what people get from reading between the lines. Currently, Edublogs Magazine is supported by Edublogs and its related services. Gotta pay for those hosting fees, you know. Which means, currently, it has no income, no advertising, and while it might in the future, and has the potential to monetize, as does every self-hosted blog and blogger, right now we’re taking things slow and building up content - which is the right thing to do.

As for offering a public service, Edublogs Magazine is just part of the tremendous volume of good will that comes out of the sheer life force that is James Farmer. I told him a year ago that Edublogs needed an umbrella site that featured information on education issues for edubloggers and a showcase for the now more than 150,000 bloggers on edublogs, and he said “Sure. Do it.” I won’t tell you what I told him when he turned my idea back around on me. It involved four letter name calling words. And yet, here I am. Altruistic naivety.

As for favoritism over Edublogs contributors, I’m in charge of the favors and so far I’m not very discriminating on that issue. Actually, I’ve very discriminating. You write some good stuff, and you want to contribute, you got my vote. Where you come from doesn’t matter. I’m an equal opportunity geographic discriminator.

As for switching from Blogger, come join the lemmings soon before you are left behind.

I like this quote on transparency:

The promise of transparency is that the customer is being put into a new relationship. Instead of treating customers as couch potatoes bred to be bathed in the hostile photons of marketing messages, we’re going to assume we’re all adults. We’re going to do our business as if it were a matter of mutual benefit. No trickery, no hype, just quickly coming to agreement about what’s in each of our self interest.
More at http://tinyurl.com/2b8qgc

Edublogs is a business, not an individual. As such, transparency is a matter of mutual benefit. Edublogs gets the benefit of the doubt, but there’s no reason why I can’t ask or inquire about their true motives.

And, who cares if you’re transparent? You’re one of those lone bloggers! Now, if you were making money selling water online to other Australians, you’d be open to criticism!

Of course, maybe openness and transparency are specific to our geography, along with great pieces of legislation like No Child Left Behind?

;->

Take care,
Miguel

If prior to this article it wasn’t very clear about the goals of The Edublogs Magazine, it is now. James and Lorelle have set this Ezine up to make money, not as a public service. Which I don’t have a problem with, that is how we support a consumer driven economy, people taking a risk and seeing where it leads.

They are also saying they are not going to limit contributors to only the Edublog blogging community, however, I believe that they will probably give first preference to Edublog writers, which as a money making enterprise it is their right, just as it is a local newspaper’s right to choose their articles. They are saying that if others have something to say, they are not forcing anyone to switch to Edublog. (Please correct me if I am wrong).

As as a result my research today I decided to take a closer look at EduBlogs and signed up for an “account only” to see what it was actually about. I haven’t really looked around Edublog very much before, having just started blogging a short while ago. While it seems well put together and visually appealing, I didn’t see anything that differentiated it enough, to cause me to jump up and immediately switch everything from Blogger. I will keep poking around though.

That being said - I still continue to have some trepidation about how this will all turn out…I honestly hope it works well for all concerned and that the present mostly “collegial” collaboration of the educational blogging community continues and does not become dog-eat-dog in people’s efforts to “get their share of the pie”. Or that there are contentious and continuous claims around “copyright infringement” on their ideas that were/are developed while blogging, which would tear apart and segment our community even more than it does today. The who’s idea was it argument again.

When things become monetized and there is the possibility of making money, people change (often very quickly).

I fear that the “age of innocence” in blogging in the educational community might be coming to an end (I hope not) and perhaps this is why so many other bloggers are commenting negatively about this issue.

And you, too, Graham. Let our content speak for itself, which is what a really good blog should do. Besides, there will always be naysayers.

I’m so excited to offer a platform that will bring educators and bloggers together so we can all learn from each other. We all want to work harder to bring blogs and web technology into the school system, a system in some countries with such Victorian fears about overprotecting children from technology it’s embarrassing to watch. Which is why I’m so glad we have recruited Charles Brown to cover some of the personal aspects of that kind of thinking, putting a human face on what the actions of governments and “well-intentioned” school officials are really doing.

This is a huge subject and we can only cover a small portion of it all. We are not going to be the sole source for online education news, but we will cover all that we can can.

As for helping Edublog members, it’s not a matter of money, it’s a matter of voice. Hosted by Edublogs and part of the Edublogs Network, we want to work harder to help the Edublogs Community build their community voice and let them be heard. And found. I’m really looking forward to helping all educators and students be heard, but especially those who blog for free, with no direct compensation, here on Edublogs. These altruistic folks need all the applause they deserve.

My biggest concern will be the content…if it is good, I will read it and keep it bookmarked, if it sucks I will vote by not continuing to read it and deleting its present bookmark. As one of the new little guys that has learned alot about teaching and himself by blogging since October 2007, I want to keep learning and using blogging to improve both as a teacher and a human being.

Transparency in blogging and on the web is a myth that needs to go away. This is true especially as more and more people are attempting to make money blogging about (fill in the blank).

In the past 5-10 years (which I was not a part of unfortunately) there was an open exchange of ideas that people used to grow and learn, but that openness seems to be decreasing as more people “turn into consultants or profit based blogging” using ideas developed and learned from these blogging forums.

I am very concerned about this possible evolution in blogging, because I believe that it will eventually dampen the open exchange of ideas that I am becoming accustomed to…because bloggers are starting to see others profit on ideas they may have had and discussed openly without any credit or profit for themselves.

Maybe I am being too critical or pessimestic in my view, I hope I am wrong and we continue to have open and frank discussions in the education community to help improve our teaching and our students futures, but…we will see. And maybe I am just simply way off base as usual. If I am please let me know. Thanks Harold

Oh well, once bitten, twice shy! Instead, I will continue dialogue with people one-to-one, and help them out wherever I can with the actual genuine work of introducing edublogging in the classroom. Someone has to do it..and as yet none of the eudblogs products are doing it.