Glenn Groulx

Hello Lystra,

Welcome to the blogging seminar!

I think that using blogs for chronicling is an important aspect of formal academic blogging. For me, this process of reporting and commenting on conferences and seminars involves jotting down notes, collecting short voice narrations, preparing and conducting short impromptu interviews with participants and presenters during coffee breaks and lunchtime, collecting and reflecting on backchannel Twitter commentary during presentations, and doing a post-conference blog post reviewing the archived presentations.

This reporting process takes several weeks, and lead to numerous posts, podcasts and uploaded files. I upload the raw notes, oultines, scanned images of conference notes, and voice notes to a sandbox part of my edublog, a more private "holding space".  I tag these these for my private use, categorizing them as separate artefacts that i might re-visit and re-use at some later time. I add meta-narrative, add context cues, so I can remember the context of the isolated tidbits and info-scraps.

I then begin weaving the content together as a narrative, linking and embedding the pieces into a series of posts. I am always looking for ways to tag and categorize these posts, and often check out the Tag Clouds of other edubloggers, to compare my tagging strategies with theirs. How did they do their tagging? What are they posting about? What data streams and info-scraps are they weaving into their narrative? What sources are they quoting, citing, or drawing from?

The chronicling process involves a cycle of reading others' blogs, filtering, synthesizing and sense-making. It is an example of how one can comfortably blog in the open by sharing one's thoughts and ideas and processes of idea capture.

reposted to my edublog here

Glenn

Hello leva,

Welcome to the seminar!

I think that learning out in the open involves a transition. Ideally, it is good to do this transition within some secure holding practice space, such as a practice social network. Moodle plays such a role, as does the ELGG platform.

I had started out blogging within a cohort as a student, and generally had some idea of what I wanted to do with the content I was posting - I felt some investment in the postings, but once I moved to a more independent learning stance, I began pro-actively posting content and adding tags that would aid me with finding them at a later time - in effect, the tagging aided me with easier retrieval of the personal archive. I shifted from blogging for the course to blogging for oneself.

Taking the plunge into blogging is apt for the metaphor of the swimmer of the data "streams" and "rivers".

Glenn

Hi Michael,

I have been blogging both as a students and then as an alumnus within an ELGG platform at Athabasca University, and having the option to set the privacy settings to limit who can view the posts played an important role for me with becoming more aware of the implications for both blogging within a cohort (peers only) and then blogging in the open for a larger audience.

I wonder if the current cohort of students are more wary of blogging "in the open" partly because of a heightened awareness of their privacy (perhaps now more aware of the potential dangers after being sensitized by media reports?). Perhaps also because there is a more distinct separation now for many users between school-related activities and social-family activities.

Glenn

Hi Michael,

Welcome to the seminar!

You mention that your students are encouraged to post in the open from behind the institutional firewall. How many of them do so? Have you noticed that at the beginning of the course, there is a warming up period, a period of reluctance to blog, a reticence, and you need to engage them in a dialogue to persuade them to contribute? 

I remember when I reached a critical transition as a graduate student at Athabasca University while I was engaged in independent study, and my professor wanted me to start publishing in the open to a more public audience. I was nervous, and it was a big decision to be more open when up till that time I had been blogging within a secure learning space.

Glenn

Here is an interview I had with Sylvia Currie at the ETUG workshop last week. Sylvia is the SCoPE community facilitator. What are your impressions of the interview about SCoPE community? Was there anyhting that surprised you? Also: Was there something else you wanted to comment on or ask about? You can use your blog to comment on this topic, or respond in this forum thread.

Spotlight on SCoPE - A Chat with Sylvia Currie