There’s been much handwringing about the “edublogosphere” not flocking to follow self-proclaimed leaders. That people are disgusted because other people don’t clamor to follow someone else’s lead because they say they are leading something. I’m not going to link, or point fingers, or name names. I’m going to keep this post short, because I could very easily devolve into full-on rant mode.

Leadership is earned, not taken. You’re not a leader just because you say so. People shouldn’t be compelled to follow you just because you make a bunch of noise. If you are a leader, people will follow you. If you’re not a leader, they won’t. Get over it.

That, and one of the beautiful things about the “edublogosphere” is that there aren’t any leaders. There doesn’t need to be a leader. It’s a community of peers, and every individual’s perception of the community is different, according to their connections, needs, and contributions.

Stop worrying about leading, and just work on affecting the change you want to see.

Update: My language was unclear, and I was (rightly) called out by James Farmer in the comments. Here’s the bit I responded with to clarify what I was trying to say:

“what I was trying to get at is that there is no set of “official” leaders – my leaders are different than yours, and they are different for every individual. There is no defined hierarchy that everyone agrees define “the leaders” that must be followed…”

I just took a quick peek at the “Top Posts & Pages” stats for my blog, as calculated by the WordPress.com Stats system. I had it run the numbers for my most popular posts of all time, and was both surprised and dejected. Apparently, this is not an edublog after all.

I’m actually not sure what kind of blog this is – my most popular post of all time was a comment on potential political/police entrapment of protestors. Followed, way back, by a stupid post on how (the then newly released) Google Maps could see my house. There are a couple of posts with source code or tips. One on MediaWiki. At #19, the first post that might be interpretted as educational in nature – talking about podcasting.

Whatever. It’s my blog, and I’ll probably keep posting crap on all kinds of topics. Maybe I should set up a new WordPress Category just for “edublog” posts…

I just got a note from Pito Salas over at Blogbridge, and it looks like my Edublogs Guide was the most popular guide on the service for the month of July! That Guide is the snapshot of my Edublogs reading list in BlogBridge, so it’s cool to see that it’s coming in handy for someone.

Or, is someone just using it as a starting point for some Pipes/GoogleMashup/OPML automated coolness? Either way, Edublogs kicked ass and took names in July.

I was asked to share my Edublogs reading list, which is published automatically by my copy of BlogBridge, in the BlogBridge Topic Guides website. It's basically a web front end for the .opml file generated by BlogBridge, but it might be a handy way to share the list.

So, now I'm a "BlogBridge Topic Expert" – I'm rather uncomfortable with the term "expert" but it's their word, not mine. The new Edublogs Reading List is online, and (I think) should stay synced with my list in BlogBridge, so maintenance won't be a problem.

BlogBridge Edublogs Reading List

I just checked in on Josie’s map of Edubloggers, and has it ever grown! There are now 347 people around the world identifying themselves as “edubloggers”. The pattern of distribution is interesting, too. Most of Europe and North America are saturated. Africa is basically unrepresented, and northern Asia (including all of Russia) is blank.

Stephen Downes is taking a hiatus from publishing his awesome OLDaily resource. Stephen – I have no idea how you’ve managed to keep up the volume and quality of publishing you have done so far! You definitely deserve a break. I’ll miss OLDaily while it’s gone.

I’m feeling a bit like Rob – our Gandalf has just disappeared into the depths of Moria, and we’re now left to stumble through on our own. Hopefully his hiatus is a bit more relaxing, but I’m looking forward to meeting Stephen The White…

This is welcome news indeed! Greg Ritter has returned from his long, long silence, and has begun blogging again! I’m guessing Greg found it easier to go underwater during the whole Bb IPO and WebCT shindigs, but now that those things have been dealt with maybe he’ll be able to blog more often.

Excellent news, Greg. I’d been keeping your old blog in my subscriptions Just In Case™ and have already subscribed to your new one.

Thanks to Scott and James for the heads-up on Ritter’s Return. Greg’s already hit the ground running with some great comments from Blackboard users about weblogs, wikis and podcasting.

I just updated my copy of Blogbridge to the latest weekly (2.12) and in this version they threw the switch on OPML publishing of folders/guides of feeds. I took a couple of minutes to gather my education-related subscriptions into one guide, and tried publishing it as OPML.

D’Arcy’s Wild and Wacky Edublogs Reading List

It contains 102115 feeds of edubloggy goodness. There are some stale feeds that I just can’t bring myself to delete (you know, in case they ever post something). If you’re using an aggregator that groks live OPML feeds, just subscribe to the URL. If you’re using anything else, you may need to download the OPML and manually import it.

No guarantees that I’ll keep the list up to date, but it’s easy enough to do that it shouldn’t be a problem (unlike the iPodder.org educational directory, which is a tedious pain in the ass to maintain – which is why I’ve neglected it for months)

I think this might be the first time my blog has made it to a short list of anything. Josie just posted the “short list” for the 2005 Edublog Awards, and yours truly was nominated in the “Best designed/most beautiful edublog” category. Not sure how to take that, since I use the K2 template for WordPress and have only done some minor tweaks. I suppose it’s a vote for a combination of navigation structure, and those funky panoramic banners I swap through the header.

Regardless, it’s pretty cool to be nominated. Lots of truly interesting blogs got nominated – but I’ll accept sneaking in somehow