During the rest of the summer I am working on building a new Edjurist website. I will still be posting here, but sometime in late July I will move over to a new, far more powerful platform. The new platform allows me to take the Edjurist beyond blogging and offer a range of different resources related to education law. I will still have the same web address, but you might have to update your RSS feeds.
I am also going to be collaborating with a giant of the edublogosphere in a new project to bring some topical educational leadership professor blogs under one banner. I won't announce who it is yet, but your hint is that the organization's book club this summer drew over 100 people!
Here are some of my ideas I am working on for the New Edjurist:
- Blog: Same old same old there. The blog won't change much at all.
- Ed. Law Blog Search Page: See here.
- Complete Ed. Law Blogroll: Want to get everyone their Technorati ratings. I will probably make a widget that others can embed on their blogs (I will give instructions) so that we can grow our little community here.
- Forum: An educational law forum can be used by anyone as long as their topic relates to educational law. Anyone can post discussions or questions there and get responses from others. This is a give a little get a lot collaboration where folks can begin to pool their knowledge.
- Case Database: A lot of the cases in educational law get referred to a lot, but are not collected in one place. Cases will be collected here (at least the outside links will be collected) so that anyone with an interest in a particular topic within educational law can click that topic and get the most important and referred to cases in that area. It won't be a complete list (that would be an enormous task) but it should have most of the big cases.
- Links to State Education Law Statutes: Education is largely governed by these statutes so it makes sense to link to them online. I will try to do it in a map interface.
- Ed Law Instructional Database: A lot of the materials I use in class will be posted here for open access. Links to relevant videos, articles, blog posts, etc. by topic will be provided and I will provide my syllabi. It is a place for teachers of Ed. Law to collaborate.
- Organization Links: Links to other organizations interested in educational law. Possibly with a yearly confernence overview for finding the ed. law conferences near you (there are dozens of ed. law conferences around the U.S. each year).
- Job Board: Not sure how much this will get used, but I am fine posting links to advertisements for ed. law jobs.
I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on those aspects, but also I want to hear what you always wanted online related to educational law and never had. I am not a fantastic webbuilder, but I will do what I can. It will probably take me at least a year to build it completely, so any requests on which items I should work on first? I am even willing to take color palatte suggestions. Some (including my wife) don't find the current Edjurist site very attractive.
Also, let me just throw this out there and see what you think. I am thinking about including advertising on the site that I would pool in a non-profit and use to build an educational law scholarship fund. I would hold a national competition to pick the winner and then provide whatever yearly income the advertising generated to that student. The first year it probably wouldn't be much, but I think it would grow as the site grows. What do you think of that? I am not a fan of advertising on my site, but I do think it might be worthwhile if we can inspire a few more people to study in the Ed. Law field.
Anyway, I am building, so now is the time to let me know your suggestions! You can e-mail me or leave a comment.
Article originally appeared on The Edjurist - Information on School and Educational Law (http://edjurist.com/).
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