Revision/Appended April 17, 2010: Author's Notes

I recognize this post was a turning point in developing the blogging framework, as these sources were useful in beginning to put together a draft to explain how independent bloggers organize their ideas. I was quite interested in Johnson and Liber's ideas concerning the need to shift the emphasis of blogging from formal skills building to lifelong learning using blogging as a primary form of self-expression. I was intrigued by the use of the Viable Systems Model and began adapting it to the use of independent blogging. I found the work by Dron and Anderson especially timely. However, looking at the details given here in this post, I had not used enough contextual cues to track back the exact contribution of their work in the development of my ideas. However, I think that the distinctions made in that article between groups, networks and collectives enabled me to envision the different roles an individual blogger might play as an autonomous agent. I was quite interested in Lilia Efimova's work on the idea development process as she recorded her progress in her blog as she developed her dissertaion, and her ideas are a treasure trove of concepts and patterns waiting for a re-visit.

Article Synthesis and Analysis:

Title: The Personal Learning Environment and the human condition: from theory to teaching practice

Keywords: PLE, Personal VSM, systems theory, autonomous learners

Authors: M. Johnson and O. Liber Year: 2008

Relevant Quotes: "goal of facilitating self-regulated learners will only be achieved if learners are able to situate their technological practices within a broader conception of their personal and social existence" (pg. 8).

"the need to become more autonomous through technology will increasingly become essential to their self-efficacy" (pg. 12).

Key Concepts:

First "Zone of Concern" - collections of learning activities, closed courses; learning 'groups' as defined by Anderson and Dron (2009).

Second 'Zone of Concern' - module maps; method for organizing tasks; calendar; roadmap; coordinating system for participation of individual within many 'groups'

Third 'Zone of Concern' - monitoring system; (Self-Delivery); collection of front and back-channels needed for managing complexity of current learning activities of individual learners; Focus is on question: "Am I learning what I should be?"

Fourth "Zone of Concern" - rich model of self; Self-development

Fifth "Zone of Concern" - the totality of system is integrated and made coherent; Self-steering; Self-knowledge and personal 'model of self-in-the-world'

Article Two

Title: "How the Crowd Can Teach"

Authors: Dron, Anderson

Year: 2009

Keywords: groups, networks, collectives

Relevant Quotes: "capacity to build and sustain new connections allows NETWORKS to exploit emergent connections to the outside world, with potential gains in knowledge, influence, social capital, and perspective" (pg. 7).

Notes: Horowitz - Overview of Learners -

1% - creators of content; initiators of conversations

10% - synthesizers or commentators who respond to invitations and prompting by creators

28% - have used tags to organize content

Article 3

Title: WebLog as a Personal Thinking Space

Authors: L. Efimova

Year: 2009

Keywords: confessional writing, educational biography, PIM, sense-making

Relevant Quotes: "Sharing fuzzy ideas in public also creates an opportunity for feedback. Over time I have learnt not to count on it, as it is difficult to predict whether anyone will comment and what exactly might catch their attention. However, I have also learnt to appreciate unexpected turns in my own thinking triggered by the feedback of others" (Efimova, 2009, pg. 6).

Blogging Activities for Sense-Making:

Organization- Self-linking- Running titles- Categories- Tagging- Metadata maintenance- Retrieval of items for re-use- Blogging as an iterative process-

Stages of idea development process:

Awareness and articulation- Reading and writing to develop ideas, catching ideas on the fly, encourages free-writing, brainstorming and drafting ideas beyond keywords, provide contextual information, collects random notes

Sense-making- Connecting, developing and redefining fuzzy ideas; generates concept traces, use of tagging for categorizing or piling; experimental playful forming of connections, sharing fuzzy ideas- One's own "refactoring in the backstage" through blogging gets connected with ideas of others- "everyday grounded theory", reading weblogs, scan for interesting themes; collecting examples, links to resources, consider interpretations and connections between themes-

"blogging makes the loose ends visible" (pg. 6)

- Review weblog archives for potential re-use of ideas in previously written posts

- Add digressions from main topic, to be revisited later- Reflections of iterations of presentations or working papers or documents-in progress;