[Air-l] AoIR Student Blog Community Forming

[Mary-Helen Ward]

AoIR is sponsoring the formation of a student blog community in which 
AoIR student members can have their blogs listed and linked on the AoIR 
home page.  If you wish to join, simply email me <mhward at usyd.edu.au> 
with 'AoIR student blogs' in the subject line and include the following 
information:
- your name (or the pseudonym you would like to appear in the list)
- the name of your blog
- the url of your blog
- a sentence summarising your research area/interest/focus.


Background
At the AoIR conference in Brisbane a small group of graduate students 
met with Ted Coopman, the graduate student representative on the AoIR 
Exec. One of the things that was suggested by participants at that 
meeting was the possibility that some central place be created with a 
list of the blogs of graduate student members of the Association. The 
Executive enthusiastically supported this member-generated idea and 
approved a small button I've designed that people can use on their blogs.

The intention is to help form a student community of common interest - 
many of us are already linking to each other and have each other on RSS 
feeds, but this would create a quick way to connect with and for new 
student members. Also, at the PhD colloquium in Brisbane many PhD 
presenters reported that they found the input from faculty present to be 
really helpful, especially as we're all working in such a 
multi-disciplinary and 'out there' academic area and many of us have 
supervisors with more traditional research experience. Having our blogs 
linked would mean that we could bring up issues we were concerned about 
for discussion among a wider audience that has a deeper understanding of 
the issues of our research areas than many of the people we are in 
face-to-face contact with.  It would also give faculty members in AoIR a 
way to learn the research interests of the graduate student members of 
this new and rapidly expanding discipline.

If you know student members of the organisation who aren't on this list 
feel free to pass this email on to them.
 
Mary-Helen
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Educational Developer
Flexible Online Learning Team
USyd eLearning
Office of the Pro Vice Chancellor, Teaching and Learning