My Wikipedia Education

In the process of one of my most recent posts, I coined a term to refer to the bloggers in the Educational Technology community. I added 'EdTech Bloggerati' to Wikipedia as a term to describe these people. (I mostly did this as an experiment to understand the process for myself!) Members of the 'EdTech Bloggerati' are concerned with engaging with many different members of the community for the purpose of scholarly discussion and conversation about the future of education and technology.

I wrote what I felt was an average definition of the term and included several bloggers who could possibly defined by this term.

I returned to the page the next day and found a warning that the article may be removed due to 'obscure neologism.' According to Wikipedia's own sources, neologism is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created ("coined") — often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context.

Well... essentially they are correct, but if you look at the definition, you'll see the reasons why I coined the term.

1) This term is applied to new concepts: The integration of technology into educational practice is a new concept and members of the EdTech Bloggerati are those individuals who are at the forefront of synthesizing the previous uses of technology in education and developing new ways to use technology in education.

2) EdTech Bloggerati also defines the older ideas of education and technology which have taken on new cultural context due to the inclusion of Web 2.0 tools and in decrease in the POE (Point of Entry) for students to have an Internet presence.

I'm hoping that the term survives... There have been two of Wikipedia's editors that have dinged it for being too obscure, but regardless of the outcome, it has been an education for me and something that I will definitely pass on to the students I work with on a daily basis.

You could show your support by clicking on the link here and adding to the definition of the term...