Jigging is an increasingly crucial blogging skill which involves tapping into data streams and extracting useful data bits, and adding relevant meta-commentary. This type of post differs slightly from berry-picking as it focuses more on extraction of cues, or data-bits for further exploration.

Suggestions for Composing Jigging Posts:

A post involving jigging would begin with a preamble, perhaps describing personal context, motivation, etc. There might be a few different posts, with short notes about each, such as key words, quotes, significant learning, definitions, inferences,impressions, etc.

1. Twitter

Here is an informative, deep analysis from Tom Barret about Twitter and its usefulness as a networking tool.

Data Bits:

• Twitter described as a "...platform that can fluidly handle both synchronous and asynchronous messaging".
• importance of retweets to aid others to keep up with torrent

Twitter - A Teaching and Learning Tool

My favourite metaphor for how we use Twitter is the idea that it is a river that is constantly flowing. And that when we open up the Twitter site in our browser or start up Twhirl we are at the banks looking on. Some of us stay on the banks, roll out our picnic rug or unfold that favourite chair and settle in to watch the information stream pass by. Others quietly observe from the banks for a short time but have their trunks on underneath their clothes, and were always going to jump in and contribute.

Significance for my own learning:

The author mentions it is sometimes important to post re-tweets to ensure followers capture the tweet - interesting parallel to jigging metaphor, the re-casting again and again into the data streams. Could the jigging process be expanded to include both the act of passive collection of data, as well as active search activity in the form of requests from others on Twitter, for example?

2. Activity Streams:

I regularly tap into my Google Reader blog feeds to follow blog posts from various edubloggers, and enjoyed the post about George Siemens about activity streams.

Data bits I collected from this post:

information streams, Danah Boyd, EDUCAUSE article, Jon Dron, context-switching, George Siemens, information splicing

Intrerpretations I inferred from this post:

• avoid centralizing your network centre in twitter using hashtags
• avoid developing metanode-activity streams are temporary

Significance for my own learning:

The following two terms are highly relevant to my own ongoing analysis of micro-blogging processes; in this case, jigging.

Defined Terms:

context-switching – i.e. the ability to shape and adjust the information stream based on context and interest at the time.

information splicing – selecting the type of information and social interaction streams that are needed to address a particular topic or area of interest at a particular time.