a vast pool of human knowledge, neglected
I very much enjoyed the recent ‘ten blogs’ deal doing the blogosphere rounds, and I also love the monthly round ups that Shelly Terrell and Karenne Sylvester (and others) often do, but I got to thinking about all those other blog posts that are going to waste….
Maybe they appeared before the blog took off. Maybe they were eclipsed by an important event or meme, or perhaps they just didn’t catch the eye in the google reader as they passed by. There is a whole library of great writing and thinking out there which, for whatever reason, has been missed.
So, how about some homework for the weekend?
1. Have a look through the archives of your favourite bloggers. You can usually find archives in the sidebar, click a tag or category, or search for keywords in a search box.
2. Find a piece you like but haven’t noticed before and leave a comment.
3. Link to it on your blog, or tweet it.
What do you think?
These are mine….
Vicki Hollett is always interesting, and I love to read what she has to say whenever she comments elsewhere, too. This one about compliments is facsinating – particularly the advice for Asian students.
English Raven has been going long enough to accumulate a sizeable archive, and Jason seems to be haring along at quite a clip lately…. a new one every day. I liked this one as I have been thinking lately about the effects of personal circumstances on teacher development.
Someone else who has no off switch is Alex Case. He very helpfully republishes lists of his own favourites from time to time, but I want to know if you are past your TEFL peak like I am.
The aforementioned Karenne is yet another prolific blogging superstar, and I had plenty of fun browsing the back catalogue of Kalinago English. This one compelled me to respond… never mind the width, feel the quality.
Over to you, and have a fun weekend’s pottering! I’m off to Osaka for the JALT PanSig conference… interviews, tweets and reports to follow.
Wow, thank you so much Darren. I’d clean forgotten I’d written that piece. I think I’d like to start my homework in this blog.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Teaching Languages, Darren Elliott. Darren Elliott said: New blog post: a vast pool of human knowledge, neglected http://bit.ly/b0jBCI [...]
Except of course, that I abandoned that plan because I just couldn’t keep up! I do think tho’ it’d be a great idea – if only I could be a blogger full-time and not have to teach too!
Like the homework assignment very, very much – I think, if it’s okay with you I’m going to put this into the BELTfree Ning and get others thinking of doing the same!
Karenne
This sounds like fun and will also allow us to dig a bit deeper into the thoughts of those we love reading. What about finding a picture to go along with the posts to make it a bit more visual?
Ill try to do my homework asap, teacher!
Great idea, especially the leaving a comment to make the thread active again. If I’m not mistaken Vicki followed your link to her back here and then onto visit my blog, which is always a pleasure!
Slight problem with linking to your oldest posts Darren, you blog hussy you
[...] Posted by mikeharrison on 21/05/2010 Darren Elliott has had a fab idea. He’s also come up with a pretty cool blogging project about digging around in different peoples used blog posts and seeing …. [...]
Alex – an ideological problem, or a technical one?
You should be grateful…I nearly chose the magnificent thread in which you set about an elderly man.
Hello Darren!
Great initiative! This gives me a reason to finally catch up on my Google reads!
I probably won’t blog about it till next week, though, but you’ll definitely see them tweeted right away! Do you have a hashtag we could easily find the links?
Mike suggests #hiddengems and I like it ; D
[...] week we, teachers on blogosphere, have a homework assigned by Darren Elliot. I really like this idea as Mike Harrison said ‘We need a project [...]
[...] Darren Elliot gave us homework: Go to your favorite blogs and dig out #hiddengems for the world to see. Mike Harrison has passed this on to me – an honor, thank you very much – and to simplify things I limited myself: [...]
[...] his blog post A vast Pool of Human Knowledge, Neglected, Darren Elliott, like a true teacher, gave us all a little bit of homework for the weekend, which [...]
Hi Darren
Thank you for this great #hiddengems initiative. It’s engendered a lot of fab posts. In addition, it’s brilliantly brought back a fascinating array of useful and stimulating articles, which could have been missed the first time round.
[...] Elliot in his blog, The Lives of Teachers, challenged bloggers to go through the archives of some of their favorite bloggers. I am calling [...]
My first thought was the post in which you saved my life by suggesting Xtranormal, but that was back in your Tumblr days. If I ever have an ideology, I’ll be sure to look out for ideologically objections as well…
Yay! We’ve been doing our homework for the past two months! Check out our #FF series “From the ELT Archives” on our blog. Every Friday we rescue a buried post from the dusty archives. It has been a lot of fun and we’ve found some goodies. http://redriverpress.com/news (see Fridays)
Great idea, Darren, and the post you chose to rekindle from my blog felt refreshing for me as well!
With the relentless pace of social media (a post from 6 months ago now feels like ancient history), a lot of good and highly relevant stuff does end up tucked away, somewhat out of sight. It is a little bit of a concern to me, as I do sometimes whether many of us are becoming over-productive and under-efficient…
I’m a little late, but I will go with this homework assignment of yours – good stuff!
Thanks Darren,
- Jason
Thanks everyone! I’m really pleased to see so many people picking this one up and running with it. I’ve left all the pingbacks in so we can all follow the spread of the idea.
Alex – nothing on this one? How disappointing ;P
Well, they do call it anti-social media. Oh no, wait a minute, that’s just me… I must admit that the more other people are doing something the less I find myself wanting to, so think of this as the Apple iPod of TEFL memes and me as the person who insisted on buying Hitachi twice instead. Did get round to doing that Vally of Pain 10 blogs thing, though, so if I can find anyway of doing this while still being an akward bugger might still happen.
You kind of did it recently with those archives of ‘English Droid’ and so on.
I use a Macbook, but a Cowon iAudio mp3 player and a docomo Phillips phone. You’re not the only one.
Homework it is! I already have a nice collection of blogs in my blogroll and visit them from time to time. Not always I have time to write comments, though. It’s a shame,I know. How other bloggers would know I share their opinions or have some different ones if I don’t leave any trace. I myself felt recently, as if I was writing to a drawer (Polish expression… Does it exist in English?)
That’s why probably my posts are so rare… I definitely need more linking and comment leaving activity
[...] a post claiming that theres a vast pool of human knowledge that’s been neglected. On his post he asked us to revisit some of the blogs we usually visit and find some #hiddengems (twitter [...]
Writing to a drawer…. it sounds familiar, and the meaning is clear. I like it! But yes, blogging is all about interaction ; D
[...] had folks recommending blogs they liked, Darren Elliot’s call for us to find and recommend hidden gems from blog archives, and my own (long neglected) posts about “What I’ve learned from my [...]
[...] gems Darren Elliot over at Lives of teachers: a vast pool of human knowledge neglected, recently challenged ELT bloggers to write about "posts that are going to waste". Mike [...]