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Posting and Blogging - Reflections
Jo's blog post about blogging and her question about whether one should blog or not, and Al's follow-up comments has got me thinking.
Here is the link to their discussion:
http://me2u.athabascau.ca/elgg/joha1/weblog/521.html
I prefer to blog when I have something to say, when I am working through ideas and lookng for feedback from others. I don't tend to blog for blogging sake, to announce to the public my inner musings on any or every topic. It might be a waste of space on the virtual page, it might be premature, undigested.
The very fact that you leave a lasting virtual fingerprint should make one pause long enough to consider whether your personal thoughts approximately formulated and open to review are ready to pass into the public domain or to be passed to a group of peers.
For example, there has been a thought niggling in the back of my mind about the role of strategic planning in my professional life. The process of applying the principles of planning (mission statement, values, and identifying a marketable "product" (the networked educator) has tremendous implications for individual educators. (I was going to say academics, but that word restricts the scope of activities educators engage in)
The management and planning over one's own "Brand name" involves careful selection of the types of discussions one engages in, and the cultivating of a network of social contacts, and decisions about when and what to blog/post for maximum effect to accomplish goals. Identifying the goals and steps to take consistent with the vision (an assignment done in 603) could be an alternate assignment rather than requiring a business plan several of us will never implement after the course finishes.
This process of seeking to promote and form connections over the blogosphere, and the process of effectively building and refining an academic career as a researcher, instructor, author, or contributor should involve strategic planning. The textbooks we have in this course do not speak to the student-as-infopreneur; it speaks to administrators and entrepreneurs, to the status quo.
However, as the connectivist course is amply demonstrating, making a name for oneself will occur in the blogosphere, in the open arena of ideas. Who links to whom, who read whose blogs, whose courses are promoted...what of all this? I need the management and planning skills of an info-preneur, not the skills of those engaged in small business or working in academic departments.
For those of us in this course who seek to be educators, the business planning has some application, but if taken as an exercise in which individual grad students can choose to apply the learning from this course to their own professional circumstances - as infopreneurs, a lot more in depth posting would occur.
I am not an entrepreneur, and the exercises in the course are likely an exercise of fiction for me. While it provides me with a greater appreciation of the thinking process of business types, my heart is really not into it.
I work in the field of adult literacy, where an upgrade to MS Word 2007 from 2003 can disrupt learners who do not have discretionary incomes to afford to upgrade. The digital divide is a reality I work in, need to account for. The traditional education system (residential schools) has scarred generations of First Nations learners, and account for most of the learners in the classrooms I teach in. I am attempting to introduce technology for holistic learning.
I am struggling to introduce technology and the web within the learning context, and this involves a reformulation of my professional learning goals. On one end, there are networks I can tap in to, and share ideas, and present my ideas. The BC Literacy Forum is one such network. But my concern is that for me much of the business planning involves making assumptions about individuals' learning/working contexts that do not match reality.
I guess a learner's silence on the blogs and forums is due to a lack of relevance, and not because they have nothing to say. Perhaps they have a lot to say, but like my literacy learners, feel their private ideas are not what public others want to hear.
Glenn Groulx
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Hi Glenn,
I felt a real depth of reality for educators and infopreneurs in your posting. What struck me is that the "languaging" is different -- not just the terms, but the intentionality of functional communication. I suspect that adult literacy may have its own "structures" that make sense -- that feel grounded in the work -- like what computers are available -- and how do we use them -- or get new ones -- or bypass them if there are other effective ways to go. I enjoyed reading your post. I hope that I can construct something useful -- but there is a sense of "maybe" it is a long-shot -- and that may ring true for others.
Jo Ann
Hi Jo Ann,
I had written a paper in 603 about my self-defined principles of teaching practice, which I have uploaded to my portfolio (with Dr. Kenny's comments) in which I talked about intersubjectivity, the sharing and co-constructing of knowledge:
Social interaction must involve inter-subjectivity, or joint co-construction and decision-making. Participants would share power and authority, but would be unequal only in their differing levels of understanding. Inter-subjectivity might involve interaction between the student and the instructor, or between learning partners, or amongst a group. The discussions generated between learners would provide a mutual support system. The informal social network is expanded by the new connections among learners. Interaction online can involve members of several communities, so that irregardless of where the students are, they can still participate and become involved in the online community.
This is indeed what the Me2U community is bringing about. In addition, I have been tinkering a bit with Twitter (www. twitter.com) to track social interactions and provide another "sounding board" for giving me information about how I am tackling tasks.
Jean Baudrillard wrote the following: "We are changing our system of values, changing all our identities, our partners, our illusions, and so on. We are obliged to change, but changing is something other than becoming, they are different things. We are in a "changing" time, where it is the moral law of all individuals, but changing is not becoming. We can change everything, we can change ourselves, but in this time we don't become anything. We are in a chameleonesque era, able to change but not able to become. This is our challenge." .
URL: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-between-difference-and-singularity-2002.html
I really think that it is through the process of dialogue and reflection that we are able to construct something collectively meaningful. Posting to blogs or writing in journals and revealing your self and ragged thoughts takes great courage. The process for literacy learners and grad students are in some ways the same, in some ways different. There is always that sense of maybe, or tentativeness, that what will be presented to others will be mirrored in some form, identified with, and not orphaned by indifference, or met with ridicule, scorn or destructive criticism. This is another challenge:
Meme questions for:
What type of digital footprint am I leaving?
Which technologies (blog, e-portfolio, wiki, etc.) best match my emerging personality for self-expression?
What footprint do I want to place upon the digital landscape?
How do I intend others to see me?
How do others' feedback on how/what I communicate mesh with my intentions?
What should I do when an exchange of ideas lead to a clash and possible shifting of my perspective?
Glenn
Hi Glen,
Meme questions.
What type of digital footprint am I leaving?
(Jo Ann) -- I want to leave an authentic footprint -- and I will not always leave a footprint -- as sometimes I hold back.
Which technologies (blog, e-portfolio, wiki, etc.) best match my emerging personality for self-expression?
(Jo Ann): So far -- I'm okay with being a new blogger -- don't think I will invest too much in e-portfolio -- but some renovations to what I am now and will be developing over time. I know that I would like to be more "confident" about wiki contributions -- formal -- more polished points or descriptions -- and I think this will evolve for me. I think there will be so many blogs to participate in that this may lead to time crunches -- more brevity.
What footprint do I want to place upon the digital landscape?
(Jo Ann) for me -- which people to I want to communicate with -- and what subject domains do I want to invest my time -- enough to do a good and worthy job.
How do I intend others to see me?
(Jo Ann) As I am (even if that is a bit intimidating -- I don't think I can be otherwise) .
How do others' feedback on how/what I communicate mesh with my intentions?
When people communicate with me authentically -- but I have had spam, requests for all kinds of things -- and that I find a hastle and a bit draining. Most of the bloggers are great.
What should I do when an exchange of ideas lead to a clash and possible shifting of my perspective?
I don't mind oppositional clashes -- but I like to do my best to understand others -- and if I can't -- I just move on as I have too much to do to stay stuck for long.
That's today's footprint. Jo Ann