Top Liberal Arts Blogs - 31 October 2011

Top Liberal Arts Blogs


The web site University Reviews Online lists “The Top 100 Liberal Arts Blogs”. The chosen blogs are arranged under the following subjects: Arts, Economics, Education, English, History, Math, Music, Philosophy, Psychology, Political Science, Science, Sociology, and Theology. A blog entitled “Dangerously Irrelevant”, by Dr. Scott McLeod, an Education Professor at Iowa University, is described as “one of the most popular edublogs on the net”. It should be of interest not only to students and teachers of education, but to anyone involved in one way or another in education or instructional technology. For example, a recent post outlines “5 key trends for the future of education”: openness (open access for academic research and greater transparency in teaching); greater transparency of the knowledge creation process (i.e. openness about how articles, books, etc. are synthesized); mobile learning; alternative forms of assessment; and alternative classroom environments.

Another impressive education blog, Pedablogue, by Michael Arnzen, includes an interesting “Student Outcomes” section, with videos of former students discussing their current career status in relation to their past education: “‘Student Outcomes’ is a continuing series of interviews with my former students who are now experiencing ‘real life’ after college. Considering how much of our work is based on the assumption that ‘learning outcomes’ will be met, I thought it would be a good way to catch up with them and to see what sort of impact college has had on their lives in the long term”. Not a bad idea.

The list of English academics’ blogs is longer and more varied, encompassing bloggers such as confessed conservatives and alleged feminists. It also includes a self-proclaimed snob who begins one posting with the sentence “There are times when I'm confronted by my own snobbery” – in reference to having hesitantly applied for a non-academic summer job once. A number of these blogs appear to be anonymous, and a few are inappropriately personal.

The ranking of the above sites as “top” academic blogs was last done in 2005. Some may have drifted since then. Overall, not a bad listing though.


Posted by May Mikati on 31 October 2011, 8:39 PM

Reflecting on Teacher Blogs - 05 October 2011

Reflecting on Teacher Blogs


Lately I’ve been looking at a variety of teachers’ blogs. It’s useful to see what others are doing. The blogs I encountered range from the most personal/informal to the clearly professional.

One of the professional blogs I found is owned by a retired college English teacher; the years of experience must help with the generation of ideas. In “Ask the English Teacher”, the writer focuses on the language much more than on himself. The titles of his posts clearly indicate this: “A Lost American Accent”, “How to Pronounce ‘the’”, “Original English”, “Capitalizing Proper Nouns …or Not?” etc.

Another interesting blog belongs to a school teacher who writes about technology in the English classroom. You will notice, however, that the writer of “Enhanced English Teacher” indicates that she is not posting much because she is busy, and seems to have turned to Twitter instead since 2010. Clearly tweeting is much easier for busy teachers than full-fledged blogging. Some less formal, more personal blogs include the following: “Hipteacher”, by a writer, teacher, and educational consultant; “ESL Blogs from English Teachers in Asia”; and “Ranting Teacher” by yet another busy educator who has recently turned to Twitter. The lines between the professional and the personal can be blurry as in “Jimbo’s English Teaching in Japan” - and at the extreme of informality (and possibly lack of professionalism) are blogs that can have negative repercussions on the writers’ careers, as indicated in this article about a suspended teacher: “Blogging High School Teacher Has No Job - and No Regrets”.

While blogging is still thriving, one conclusion seems to be that it is giving way to tweeting in some cases, but tweeting is micro-blogging, so any talk of the death of blogging is premature and possibly flawed. For now, I shall stick to blogging as it is more expressive in my view. Still, writing a blog is not an easy business. It requires time, tact, and perseverance, and it is more likely to be successful if it is reader-centered.


Posted by May Mikati on 05 October 2011, 9:54 PM