The upcoming issue of American Photo has a feature on some of the most influential bloggers writing about photography and society (including this one). Jay Defoore, an editor at American Photo, begins his article with a nice description about the bloggers he features.
A university professor in Oregon dissects the week's news photographs. A guy in Germany posts open letters to Corbis owner Bill Gates. An astrophysicist in Pittsburgh spotlights some of the best fine-art photography on the Web.
With blogging tools and social networking sites gaining widespread use over the last two years, a new generation of thought leaders has emerged to give photographers and photography fans new avenues of information.
For me to recieve such a mention feels a little odd. Since early 2004, I have maintained a blog because I believe that students could benefit from outside the classroom teaching. As an educator, I believe people learn in lots of diiferent ways and that in order to be successful with younger generations I needed to go where people lived -- on the Internet.
What I have discovered is that teaching and blogging are highly complimentary activities. I feel that many of my best ideas come from the feedback people give me off the blog. In a sense the experience of teaching is more global and interconnected to a diverse range of ideas than it has been previously. Teachers can no longer lock themselves away in an ivory toward, but must, instead engage students in a variety of ways - including blogging if they feel it is appropriate.