I only just came across Graham Wegner’s blog today through a series of links through other blogs, but I am glad he did.
Graham at the beginning of July explains his Olympics Effect Theory. It’s something worth a read by the entire blogosphere and is important for us to understand as global social learning contributors. Basically he is comparing the coverage of the 2000 Olympics held in Syndey. From a US perspective due to TV coverage (because the US can afford grand coverage of their grand number of athletes) the games appeared to be all about the American athletes. From an Aussie TV perspective since they don’t have a large number of their own athletes to showcase they had to show stories of athletes from all nations.
Gramham continues with…
“Unless you live in a smaller country, you can’t see that many of the issues pushed as being important around the edublogosphere are actually focused towards the biggest participating nation and its education system. This is not a criticism. Don’t get me wrong. But it is something to be aware of if you are a Stateside blogger – your view is not necessarily the world view. Just like the American public watching the Sydney Olympics. There are others involved, maybe in lesser numbers, but just as passionate at leveraging new technologies for learning.”
I guess his theory hits home for myself as a Canadian. We’re not small by any means, but we have more US coverage (news, entertainment, music) then we do Canadian and we seem to like enjoy it that way. More people tuned into American Idol’s first show this season (37.7 million) then Canadian Idol’s Finale (2.35 million). If my coffee group is any way to judge….yep they all watched the US version; every episode.
Graham Wegner is trying to point out that there are lots and lots of people in the world that are interested, passionate and striving to share their perspectives on elearning, technology, blogging, etc. and that we each should try to stay aware and informed to all of those perspectives. I find that I am continuously learning from people all around the world now since I started blogging and it’s wonderful. It’s amazing what you can learn from the “small” and “big” when you listen to all the voices and can you imagine how unified we as edubloggers will all feel as this does happen. It’s just as amazing and liberating too when you open yourself to new perspectives and learn from them creating expanded or new ideas that you can then use within your own context.
Have you read a blog from the other side of the world today?