As noted in an earlier posting, today is Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers all around the world will write about the environment. The point is to increase awareness, cultivate involvement, and raise a bit of money to support environmental causes. To find out more, visit the Blog Action Day Web site, or view the promotion video on YouTube.
In general, I am supportive of efforts like this to promote collaboration among bloggers. As I suggested in my posting on Blog Day, however, it can be somewhat challenging to make collaborative initiatives around a broad issue or event relevant to the focus of a specific blog. In the case of Blog Action Day, it is not so much of a challenge. There are any number of mission-driven organizations out there using a variety of online approaches to educate volunteers, donors, consumers, and the general public about environmental causes. The Blog Action Day site lists quite a few on its resources page. To this list I’d also like to add the National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife University.
Another resource I’d like to throw into the mix is 43 Things, a site that is all about setting personal goals and achieving them—and also sharing them with others along the way. Environmental change, in so many ways, comes down to individual knowledge and individual choices. A tool like 43 Things is perfect in such a case. It provides a platform for recording personal environmental learning and action goals and holding yourself accountable for them.
I have posted before about blogging as a professional development tool (here and here)—mainly just noting great things Rosetta Thurman and Michele Martin had already said about the subject. 43 Things can be a great complement to using a blog in this way and it in fact has been part of the inspiration for development of more sophisticated personal learning environments (PLE) like Elgg and PLEX.
I intend to write about Elgg, PLEX, and personal learning environments in general in upcoming postings, but I’ll wrap up today’s Blog Action Day posting with the list of goals related to the environment that I have started at 43 Things. I have posted the list below, but you can also visit it at https://www.43things.com/person/jtcobb. I’m not up to 43 things yet, but I plan to keep working at it. I encourage you to join me on any of these goals and also let me know of any that you set up for yourself.
