AoIR is sponsoring the formation of a student blog community in which AoIR student members can have their blogs listed and linked on the AoIR home page. If you wish to join, simply email me <mhward@usyd.edu.au> with 'AoIR student blogs' in the subject line and include the following information: - your name (or the pseudonym you would like to appear in the list) - the name of your blog - the url of your blog - a sentence summarising your research area/interest/focus. Background At the AoIR conference in Brisbane a small group of graduate students met with Ted Coopman, the graduate student representative on the AoIR Exec. One of the things that was suggested by participants at that meeting was the possibility that some central place be created with a list of the blogs of graduate student members of the Association. The Executive enthusiastically supported this member-generated idea and approved a small button I've designed that people can use on their blogs. The intention is to help form a student community of common interest - many of us are already linking to each other and have each other on RSS feeds, but this would create a quick way to connect with and for new student members. Also, at the PhD colloquium in Brisbane many PhD presenters reported that they found the input from faculty present to be really helpful, especially as we're all working in such a multi-disciplinary and 'out there' academic area and many of us have supervisors with more traditional research experience. Having our blogs linked would mean that we could bring up issues we were concerned about for discussion among a wider audience that has a deeper understanding of the issues of our research areas than many of the people we are in face-to-face contact with. It would also give faculty members in AoIR a way to learn the research interests of the graduate student members of this new and rapidly expanding discipline. If you know student members of the organisation who aren't on this list feel free to pass this email on to them. Mary-Helen __ Educational Developer Flexible Online Learning Team USyd eLearning Office of the Pro Vice Chancellor, Teaching and Learning