A few notable items from the world of higher ed blogging:
- A rankings watchdog. U.S. News blogger and rankings guru Bob Morse points to a newly formed watchdog of college rankings . Called the International Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence, or IREG, the group “will conduct reviews of various ‘academic rankings’ and measures of ‘academic excellence’ to assess how well they serve higher education stakeholders and the general public,” Morse writes. He’s also a member of the executive committee. Morse plans to use his blog to “keep readers informed on the evolution and activities of the IREG-International Observatory and what impact it has on rankings around the world.”
- From print to digital. Karine Joly‘s latest column for University Business is all about how college magazines are making the transition from paper to digital. She links to the story in a recent blog post and also shares a nice list of online college magazines.
- Blogrolling and its discontents. Karlyn Morissette has a couple of interesting posts lately about her anti-blogroll stance and a why I blog manifesto, in which she also reveals she and Kyle James had a six-hour conversation about blogging. (I assume this was a face-to-face or phone conversation — what I like to term a real conversation [and yes I know my Baby Boomer age is showing] — rather than one of those virtual conversations we like to talk about on our blogs.) Seriously, though. Six hours? About blogging? I don’t think I’ve ever had a six-hour conversation with anyone about anything, not even punk rock or baseball. (Update: Kyle informs me via Twitter that the conversation was via Gtalk.)
- A new look for college websites? The eduStyle blog, always a great resource for web ideas, discusses some visual trends and points to refreshing new interfaces from Boston University and Loyola-Marymount. Could these sites and their navigation structures signal the next wave in university web design? Bonus link: the top five websites on eduStyle with zero votes.
- Time to unplug for the weekend? I leave you with this provocative post from the Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog:
A provocative article in the forthcoming issue of Atlantic Monthly argues that Web surfing is rewiring our brains, making us unable to stay focused long enough to make it to the end of a book or long article.
I would have posted more from that blog post, but I lost interest before I could finish the second paragraph. Seriously, though, that article — Is Google making us stupid? — is worth a read. The references to 2001: A Space Odyssey may be lost on some readers, but there’s a lot to ponder there.
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I consider 6 hours of typing to be a very real conversation LOL (and also one that leaves you with a voice at the end of it!)
Karlyn – You may have a voice at the end of it, but what about carpal tunnel? ;)