Jeffrey Keefer

Michael, there is still time to fly there! I have a 12 hour flight on Thursday morning . . .

So, Sylvia and I are planning to attend Northern Voice. Is anybody else here planning to attend?

Michael-

Northern Voice is next week, so I will certainly speak about its goings-on while there. As to my reserch, I am interested in blogging motivation, and I am planning that as being the next direction for my investigation. We know that many people blog and we know why--however, I have not seen much research as to what motivates bloggers to continue blogging. From where is the passion and interest in social media? I of course have my ideas about this, as I am sure many of our colleagues here have as well, but I have found a paucity of research thuis far.

Thank you for having a look at my site and for your feedback. Amazing the communal elements in online media!

Jeffrey

Hello, Michael. I am not reading these posts in order as the sheer volume of posts this week have overwhelmed my email and newsreader programs, so I am replying as I encounter the posts I have missed.

My Name is Jeffrey Keefer, and professionally I am a Sr. Instructional Designer at a large homecare nursing organization located in New York City. I adjunct in corporate training and instructional design at New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies as well as in the Management Communication department in New York University's Stern School of Business. I previously taught high school computer applications and philosophy (my first part of my academic background), as well as corporate technical training and knowledge management. I am currently interested in academic research, especially in the field of human resource development in and around the issues of organizational power and positionality (from a critical and postmodern perspective). I am looking to transition my work with adult education more into the online and social networking sphere, so I will be looking to you to help lead the way in this regard. I hope to also bring these interests together into more research proposals, especially from a qualitative perspective.

I have been interested in social media and online facilitation, and decided to begin recording my thoughts on my personal blog, Silence and Voice. To further explore the world of the blogosphere, I am attending the Canadian blogging conference Northern Voice next week in Vancouver, and will certainly reflect on what I learn on my own blog.

I am really looking forward to learning and sharing with our group here.

Wow, lots of great suggestions here!

I have used a variety of blogging tools over the years, including a number of the free ones, and have decided to continue working with Movable Type for my own personal blog, Silence and Voice.

Many people here seem to be proponents of the open source movement, yet I have never been the biggest fan of these free services. I think they are wonderful to experiement with and to use to promote new experiences, however I have gotten burned in the past from free software where I have gotten what I paid for and could not expect or demand anything else. If there is a problem with open source software or a bug  or some other problem, I cannot have any expectations that they will be addressed or fixed. If I am going to invest a great deal of time and effort with posts and the like, I want to make sure they are on a server where I can expect them to be backed up and otherwise protected, as well as created using software which has service contracts. I like to have control over my sites, and as I am not technical enough to be able to troubleshoot and do this all myself, I want to use a product that I know will be used for the foreseeable future.

While I considered using WordPress (free) rather than Movable Type (which does have an inexpensive educational licence that I paid for myself), I recognized that I was still personally unable to install and get either of them running on my own, so I would still have to pay somebody (a developer or support person) to professionally do it for me. I think it is wonderful to have options, as they offer something for various needs and comfort levels,

George, thank you for introducing some of us, or at least me, to the concept of connectivism. I started following your blog and am enjoying the variety of threads in the Online Connectivism Conference, and I find this expanding of my constructivist perspective refreshing, as it does indeed seem to address a component of the increased social networking reality that I face. I look forward to continuing this conversation.