The recent Florida Educational Technology Conference blogger meetup seems to have stirred up some hi-octane interest in edublog lobbying to  “make education and read/write technology a social/economic priority”, and for working towards the political mainstreaming of educational transformation which embeds new social technologies and practices (software, networks, media production and sharing).

Christopher Sessums outlines the US edubloggers embryonic manifesto in ‘Why the future needs us: educational reform, collaboration and social action”, and co-conspirator Will Richardson pitches in with A Call to…?

Focusing on the next US election is an interesting strategy, and one that might well provide some useful models and lessons for other countries. I’m interested in what a US-wide organization is going to look and work like, how it might influence and collaborate with other emerging social and educational tech associations, and very much looking forward to hearing more info on the planned June Stateside edubloggercon.

A whole bunch has happened since last June, when we held the UK’s first edublogger conference. There will be a formal announcement shortly about the new grass-roots, independent UK organization, Future Learning Online (FLO) which has emerged from a series of on and offline events, meetups, and conversations taking place over the past few years between educational bloggers, technologists, developers, IT support staff, librarians, consultants, researchers, teachers, post-grad students, trainers and many other people who don’t fit easily into these, or any single, role. We’ll be holding our next annual conference in June as well – so it’s shaping up to be an interesting summer.