Susan, over at West of Mars, tagged me with a thinking blogger award. I’m flattered. More importantly, I’m thrilled to promote some of my favourite blogs. Anyone who spends any time here knows I read and respect Susan’s work, so I’m going to leave it at that and list other blogs.

I’m nominating the following blogs, not for a single article, but for their complete bodies of work. They are thought provoking – in many cases the source of a niggling idea that was then expanded in a full post on my own blog – and inspiring.

• Dust My Broom – DMB is a group blog that has it all – humour, politics, blues and beer, and Mr Orangetoque (MOT). Anyone who followed MOT’s adventures in Asia will know he made a fine traveling companion. Of course, to explain what I was doing, I did need to frequently use the Travelocity Traveling Gnome analogy… They’ve posted a lot of excellent pieces over the years, but Raskolnikov’s Paragraphs Become Ramparts definitely stands out.
• Harold Jarche – Anyone who has spent some time in my Learning & Education section knows that Harold Jarche has been known to inspire the odd post now and again. While it has been some time since I’ve stepped on my soapbox and added my two cents, I haven’t missed anything Harold has been writing about recently. Read. Reflect. Educate.
• Half an Hour – If you don’t know who Stephen Downes is, then you’re not part of the Education community in Canada. To steal from his online About me page “Stephen Downes lived and worked across Canada before joining the National Research Council as a senior researcher in November, 2001. Currently based in Moncton, New Brunswick, at the Institute for Information Technology’s Internet Logic Research Group, Stephen has become a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata, weblogs in education, content syndication, digital rights and related issues.” Half an hour, like Harold Jarche’s blog, is must read material for me and occassionally spawns a post on learning and education on my own blog. I’ve learned so much from Stephen in the past few years – it’s time to share the wealth. Stephen’s Web is also a fascinating site and is home to the OLDaily newsletter. If you’re interested in Educational Technology and learning, these are two sites you don’t want to miss.
• A light in the heart – Carwyn (pseudonym) started this blog shortly after being notified that her father had developed terminal bowel cancer. It chronicles her thoughts, observations, and gried upon his loss. Carwyn was such an amazing source of strength and peace when my own father passed away from cancer last year. Her blog, full of love, pain, and honesty, is well worth the read.
• The Torch – Another group blog; this one is focused on the Canadian Military. Until recent years, the Canadian Military was an after thought for most average Canadians. Dutch children learn more about our soldiers, past battles, and history than Canadian children do. While they have pledged never to forget, some Canadians already have. Trudeau’s legacy to the Canadian Forces has been brutal. The bloggers at The Torch work hard to ensure that we both remember the past and are aware of current actions, media references, and what’s going on in the world around us.

…and because I was never good at sticking to the rules… honorable mentions go out to The Learned Man!, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, and Civitatensis.

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Here are the rules, for you newly tagged folk…How participation works:

• If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
• Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
• Optional: Display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Technorati Tags: thinking blogger award, meme, inspiration

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