First of all, I'm thrilled to be on this adventure with Sarah, whose work I am always benefiting from! Thanks, Sarah.
As I walked out to the driveway this morning to pick up the paper (after 2 Skype calls with colleagues, both trying to figure out the finer points of using Moodle in a less structured manner - dare I say "informal!"), I was remembering what I love about informal learning. It is happening all the time. It is both intentional and opportunistic. It is indivdiual and collective. It can be tiny and incremental, or afford a leap forward. It can be intimate or anonymous.
And then, it is also elusive. That slippery nature, Sarah, is so important. So I'm eagerly looking forward to our informal unfolding on "informal learning." So much that I'm still informally dressed in my jammies!
Nancy White
Posts made by Nancy White
I have to chime in and say that blogging gives a view over time of a person that is FAR more powerful than a bio, but it sure takes more time to absorb. So I follow blogs of people I want to learn from, get to know, work with and TRUST. I check bios just to identify initial connections. What is also interesting is to follow people's del.icio.us tags, flickr feeds or things like suprglu pages. These aggregate what THEY are paying attention to.
Hey, Sylvia. I think my blogging has "taken away" in some respects from the list. For two reasons. First, I have less time/attention to pay to seeding the list with links and resources -- I tend to put all of those on my blog. Second, it made me realize that my resource offerings were one of the "engines" that powered the list so I decided to try and get the community more involved ... by stepping back and only offering provocative questions now and again. The traffic dropped.
But here is the flip side: since I started blogging, I think that has driven the number of new members to the list up. Plus the RSS feedability of Yahoogroups enables people to "consume" it more like a blog than a discussion list. So it becomes an information flow rather than a conversational flow. But there is some sort of symbiosis going on as well. It is not all drain.
Lots of dynamics. It might be fun to try and model or draw out some of these dynamics. This is a half baked fast post because I've avoided work all morning playing with www.squidoo.com and now have to WORK!!
But here is the flip side: since I started blogging, I think that has driven the number of new members to the list up. Plus the RSS feedability of Yahoogroups enables people to "consume" it more like a blog than a discussion list. So it becomes an information flow rather than a conversational flow. But there is some sort of symbiosis going on as well. It is not all drain.
Lots of dynamics. It might be fun to try and model or draw out some of these dynamics. This is a half baked fast post because I've avoided work all morning playing with www.squidoo.com and now have to WORK!!
This past weekend we had a Seattle MindCamp 1.0 where over 135 self professed geeks spent 10am sat - noon Sunday hanging out together. We used an open space model where people proposed and led discussions, demos, games etc. We had enough sponsorship to make it free for the participants. It was a gas -- I went home at 1:15 am and came back at 9:30am as my son made an unexpected visit home from college, but I'm told from 1am - 5am they played werewolf!
http://www.mindcamp.com
If you search on the technorati tag "unconference" you will see there is a persistent conversation thread across blogs on this topic. Lots of great ideas. I notice I tend to blog about it every 6-8 weeks!
http://www.mindcamp.com
If you search on the technorati tag "unconference" you will see there is a persistent conversation thread across blogs on this topic. Lots of great ideas. I notice I tend to blog about it every 6-8 weeks!