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Links of the Week: 5 Higher Ed Web Blogs You Probably Haven’t Heard of Worth Reading

Kyle James — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:34:51 +0000

So last week was probably the first time in six months that I didn’t have a weekly links of the weeks post and I’m going to keep that trend an additional week. Part of being a good blogger is being a good reader and finding out what is going on out in the blogosphere and rest of the web world. This is the 100th post on .eduGuru and I like to think it’s reached a certain level of success and that would have never been possible without others linking to this site and the wondeful community. The Higher Education Blog community has definitely kicked into a higher gear these six months and I’ve found lots of people out there who are also writing great blogs about our niche. Here are five Higher Education blogs that you have probably never heard of, but are definitely worth checking out. Some of them are rather new and the content so far is wonderful stop on by and show your support to your fellow Higher Ed Web people.

Higher Education Blogs

Higher Ed Web Marketing – Paul Redfern has been blogging for a few months now and really hits it out of the park on some things that really get to all of us. His variety of forward thinking and simply plain reality of what we deal with posts are great to find out what another is looking towards and dealing with on a regular basis.
Marketing, Communications and Technology – Eddie Merille has also been blogging regularly for a few months. I’ve found his introduction to Issuu to be of specific value to Wofford along with his posts on social media and other subjects. Eddie is a little bit of a iPhone junkie like a lot of the rest of you, but I’ll forgive him for that. Heck maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t drool over the iPhone?
Big Glorious Mess – This new creation by David Baker has some well thought through posts. David has already shared some valuable insight about how to look at situations and deal with this “big glorious mess” that is Higher Education Web.
Wayne State Web Communications Blog – I’m not sure if Nick DeNardis is the only blogger on this one, but he does a good job sharing lots of valuable links and posting some of the really cool web projects that they work on at Wayne State.
Trending Upwards – I actually just found this blog the other day, but Shelby Thayer is on a mission to provide quality content regularly on a subject that is of incredible interest to me, web analytics. I’m so glad to see someone else in Higher Education really digging in and sharing knowledge about this incredibly important but often overlooked subject in Higher Education.
uTodd – I know that I only said five blogs, but Todd Sanders has to be one of the funniest guys out in the Higher Education Web arena. Ok I’m probably biased because he joined the Trashball ranks and posted an absolutely hilarious video of The UWGB Trashball Championship Series.

If you’re a new blog drop a comment and I’ll be sure to check it out.

Finally since we’re already on Trashball and I just gave the link to Todd’s Trashball video here’s a video Brad @ SquarePeg put together challenging Wofford’s Mascot to a game. I couldn’t get the Wofford Terrier to respond, but my dog Skip definitely responded.

eduWEB 2008 Reflections II

Kyle James — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:54:06 +0000

Finally yesterday my luggage arrived at GSP Airport four days after I last dropped it off in Philly. It was a short lived time of rejoicing. It’s been a challenging weekend as I visited my family and going through my father’s will and discussing moving issues and passing on his car; he won’t need it as he can never drive again. Just a quick update, my father has been diagnosed with brain cancer and it’s a form that is not curable. The good news is that we are looking at years of time with him instead of months. He’ll be starting radiation treatment in a few weeks and I’m sure that will be challenging for our family. As he tells me and I couldn’t agree more, “It will be alright”. Everyone, thank you for the prayers and offers of assistance. So let’s get back on reflecting on this conference and my takeaway points three, four, and five.

Higher Education is full of followers

This theme came up a few times in conversations with people. Higher Education Web individuals tend to be followers. If one person comes up with an exciting and innovative design, concept or site, then others scramble to copy. I’m not saying this is really a whole lot different than any other industry, but it does help explain the 10% who tweet and 5% who created content around this event.

The perfect excellent example of the follow the leader mentality is apparent with the eduStyle awards. Don’t get me wrong I loved the awards and Stewart has put together an amazing resource, but so many higher education sites look so similar and very few really venture off in really creative direction. This is also apparent with two schools dominating the awards. I won’t be surprised in the least to see much of the elements of these sites being copied over the next year.

I really challenge everyone to try and not copy, but really think through unique and creative directions to take Higher Ed Web.

Email is NOT dead

In Mark Greenfield’s opening keynote speech one of the tops that generated the most buzz and discussion was his proclamation that “email is dead”. This was a real challenge as I was scheduled to present on Email Marketing for Higher Education the very next day. I had a quick chat after Mark’s presentation where he told me *drum roll* that he made that statement to create the buzz and discussion and not necessarily because he 100% believed it. We both agree that it’s a very important discussion and something that a lot of people need to take a part in. To get the ball rolling last Friday I created a discussion over in the University Web Developer Ning network and I hope everyone will contribute their feelings on the subject. A lot has already been hashed out and I plan to add my two cents later this week once I’ve caught up and freed up a little more time for deep reflection.

Blogs are the answer for any school that doesn’t have a CMS and a lot that do

Heidi Cool’s presentation about College Blogs really my interest in creative ways to use blogs as a platform. When I asked her afterward why they had blogs for everything she informed me it was because they don’t have a fully developed Content Management System (CMS). From talking to lots of you there are still quite a few schools who aren’t on a CMS and a blog really is a realistic alternative. Case Western Reserve University uses blogs for pretty much everything and because the easy installation, adding new content, syndication, and management nature of a blog it really is a “low hanging fruit” type opportunity for schools to get their feet wet in a basic content management system.

Of course I’m a big blog advocate, Wofford has about twenty linked blogs and I’m an active blogger myself, so I’m a little biased, but there are a lot of sites that I’ve seen that run fully on a blogging CMS like WordPress. Also for News Rooms and Athletics Releases it can make a lot of sense to do those in a blog format.

Links of the Week April 11th, 2008

Kyle James — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:01:12 +0000

The big news of the week is Yahoo’s acquisition of IndexTools. I’m not saying this because of personal experience, but that appears to be the buzz from a lot of blogs that I follow. Unfortunately I must admit I’ve never used IndexTools so I’m at a loss here. Here are some links to what experts have to say about the acquisition, yeah that’s right experts not my usual techcrunch, readwriteweb, mashable links to news.

Also for you Higher Education people out there who enjoy social boomkaring sites, I created a private group on Mixx that is strickly for High Ed Web related content. If this is something that you might be interested in I encourage you to sign-up for Mixx, if you haven’t already, and join us!

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