Landing : Athabascau University

The Blogging Apprenticeship

PROCESS

CODE

DESCRIPTION

Awareness

AWARE

Scanning, reading, and reviewing of online resources, identifying gaps in skills & knowledge

Articulation

ARTIC

Explorations both within and beyond the instructor’s blog, the group blog and peers’ blogs; description of initial activities

Aggregate

AGGREG

Bring together content, links,

profiles and identify usage patterns

 

Re-Use

REUSE

Re-examination, culling, filtering, re-organizing; revising blog content: posts, feeds, comments;

may involve return to drafts or weaving emails or work from assignments into new blog posts

 

Re-Mix

REMIX

Draw ideas from multiple sources, then summarize, analyze, and report on ideas

 

Feed-Forward

 

 

FEEDFOR

Sharing, exchanging, story-telling to audiences

Process Capture

PROCESS

Systematic recording of thought processes and ideas using multiple media

 

Product Creation

PRODUCT

Preparation, planning, and performing of learning events; reflection in practice

 

Review

REVIEW

Post-performance summary,  critique, summary reflections

 

 

PROCESS

CODE

DESCRIPTION

Berry Picking

PICK

Identify, evaluate, and select resources; collection of ideas, links, references

Piling

PILE

classifying posts according to self-identified categories

Weaving

WEAVE

Summarizing content, embedding links into posts; adding quotations

Path-Finding

PFIND

Searching for resources; identifying and selecting  tools;

Path-Making

PMAKE

Formalize search/collection methodology; Establishing routines for using search tools

Sense-Making

SMAKE

Self-talk; rehearsals; pause-points, pulling ideas together into coherent framework; elaboration, evaluation, analyzing ideas and concepts

Path-Sharing

PSHARE

Sharing experiences and mentoring others on skills and knowledge required for path-finding and path-making

Sense-Giving

SGIVE

Passing along experiences, modeling skills, mentoring, reporting, exchanging ideas, acting as witness and observer

 

Comments

  • John Hannah May 12, 2010 - 10:43am

    Glenn - this is a really useful conception to help me make sense of the many layers of blogging. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm aiming my research at marginalized groups struggling to make transitions to post-secondary education and am very compelled by the potential of social networking, particularly blogging, as a means to facilitate this. What emergees from my work with students over the years is the realization that they are, given the opportunity, predisposed to story-telling when talking about their struggles (and triumphs) with learning. What is often missing, sadly, is that opportunity, a sense to them that story-telling is permissible or appropriate.

    Your scheme could be extremely useful for me in not only designing the learning interventions that enable story-telling but as an analytic tool for investigation. Is that what you envision here? Have you used this scheme as such a tool?

    Cheers, John

     

  • Glenn Groulx May 12, 2010 - 2:33pm

    In reply to: John Hannah

    Hello John,

    The processes are a result of analyzing my own blogging activities within Me2U and AU landing between September 2008 and December 2009, in which I participated in a number of independent study courses to complete the MDDE program. What was central to the success, I think, was that I was blessed to have one faculty member, Terry Anderson, acting as my mentor working with me.

    The "blogging apprenticeship" is intended to be a framework for designing instructional activities for learners using the blogs. I assume that the blog is a central tool, and that other tools are peripheral (although crucial) elements to blogging.

    In the landing, there are maybe a dozen tasks performed consistently by users that provide a small fraction of the overall skills needed for learners to blog well within various settings.

    Providing design schemas to guide posts, and asking learners to review their own metrics to measure their own activity and the extent to which they have been using the tools, and having learners themselves review and reflect on their own tag clouds compared to other peers or their mentor's tag cloud, is not direct assessment, per se; however, the metrics exist for learners to engage in self-assessment activities. To me, the capacity for self-regulation is central to identity construction.

     

    Othere than guiding my own practice, it is still in the development phase. I need to streamline it into a more coherent whole to present to College stakeholders. This will require piloting, research, and follow-up studies before implemented widely within a College setting.