What’s In A Name?

Oprah.  Coke.  IBM.  These names are iconic.  The meta-communication surrounding these simple words is extensive!  A name can evoke an image of trust, friendship, or power.  Of course, a name can also instill anger, frustration, or pain!  (Think of your school's rival college, a name like "Hitler", etc.)  Back in the 1970's, it was rumored that the Chevy Nova didn't sell in Central America as the name itself meant, "No Go." 

So, it seems there is a lot to a name!  One year ago, my wife and I labored over what to name our new daughter.  We wanted a strong name that was still feminine, a name that would age with her into adulthood, but not be so stuffy that she would get (overly) teased.  My wife has an Irish heritage, so we wanted something that felt ancestoral, but wasn't hard for American kids to pronounce.  And of course...we wanted to like the name itself!  One year later, we love Addison's (Addie) name.  It suits her!

Which brings us to the name of this blog!  If you saw our debut last week, you noticed the "name our blog" contest we held.  Blog names are important - they try to convey the topic area, yet they also infer ancillary descriptions and slants.  There are some great ones out there relating to education, online learning, technology, and teaching!  "Edublogger" seems to be a popular one.  Like www.theedublogger.edublogs.org, http://edubloggerdir.net, and http://edublogger.spaces.live.com/, just to name a few.

Other educational blogs are written by industry experts or speakers who others look to for new ideas and grounded wisdom.  http://edtekker.blogspot.com/2005/07/future-view-by-checker-finn.html, http://www.commoncraft.com/blog, and http://jeffpresents.com/blox.aspx are a few examples of expert blogs that come to mind.

Or perhaps you are interested in the plight of the day to day teacher.  The operations administrator who knows your struggles and troubles!  http://mrmoses.org/, http://21stcenturyed.com/, or http://gigagod.blogspot.com/ might make your daily reading lists.

But, as you've seen with many of the blogs mentioned here, several of these innovative technorati members have interesting and unusual names for their blogs.  As such, the Academic Training & Consulting team at eCollege has asked for someone else to find our name!  Something that captures who we are and what we are about.  And we think we have it!

So, I am proud to introduce our blog page, "Online Blogucation."  We hope you will find a mix of every aspect of a blog listed above in our posts.  Industry expertise, day to day teaching, learning community members and leaders, we are going to try and help foster new ways of learning and doing, using technology.  That is what our blog hopes to accomplish. 

As well, we look forward to your own insights!  Please post a comment or two - perhaps we'll even start a dialogue.  Thanks for taking a few minutes to read this.  See you next week!  Good luck - and good teaching.

-- Jeff Borden --
Director of Academic Training & Consulting