eduStyle awards - who cares?!

All I've been seeing lately are things for the eduStyle awards. On mailing lists, on blogs, everywhere.

:::rolls eyes:::

I'm sorry, but who the hell cares? The best sites will never make their way into it - the people who build them are far too busy ACTUALLY WORKING than being part of the cool kids club you have to be in to be apart of those things. The sites that ultimately do win will be held up as the best thing ever (even though they are probably more mediocre than anything else) and then everyone will run to copy them (because higher ed works very hard to avoid having original ideas....why be creative when you could just copy someone else?) and then we'll have a sea full of websites that all look the damn same.

Now, please keep in mind that this is coming from a person who HAS been on teams that have won awards like this and who has had her work held up as pretty damn good. It's not from jealousy. I'll even say that, yes, I got wrapped up in it at the time. Maybe having been there and done it I just realize that I'm far more excited by the idea of building something and having it achieve a desired result than get patted on the back by the cool kids club.

It's like being in high school all over again. In my last job, I HATED working with the faculty. I always said they had "cool kids syndrome": they were the dorks in high school that always got picked on (which is why they focused on education) but they never quite grew up socially. Now they are faculty and see themselves as the cool kids who always picked on the dorks and are emulating that behavior. Now, I won't quite compare the "cool kids" of the higher ed web world to faculty that I hate, but I do think they have a dash of the "cool kid syndrome" themselves. Web geeks were, for the most part, the geeks in high school as well. Now they are identifying themselves as the cool kids and getting into a giant nation-wide clique so they can self-congratulate on how awesome they are.

So self-congratulate away folks....I'm going to go over here and actually build something.

(Sorry....it's Friday....I'm punchy....but this rant has been brewing for a while and I had to get it off my chest)