I’m getting a jump on all those New Year’s Eve posts today by bringing back my guide to enjoying Auld Lang Syne, complete with an updated demo (by Eddi Reader).
Lang may yer lum reek.
Dec 302009
I have three real blogs, by which I mean ones I actually post things on. I have two others I received by registering at WordPress.com and Blogger. I almost never sign on to Blogger (a choice, not a critique), and mainly use WordPress.com when I show someone how to start a blog.
I don’t do that often; I’m a poor proselytizer. But I’m not bad at explaining.
There are two main routes to having your own blog. The simpler one, for most people, is a blog hosted on sites like WordPress.com or Blogger. You don’t have to consider domain name, hosting services, or any of that stuff.
You do have to figure out how a blog works, which like many things can seem quite complicated from the outside. I’m a WordPress fan, but its distinction between Post and Page is not intuitive, and the explanation in the WordPress Codex isn’t much help to a newcomer.
( *** Tech term alert: if you don’t care about WordPress, feel free to skip the next paragraph. ***)
A WP novice doesn’t immediately grasp whether, when, or how to use categories. She doesn’t necessarily see the distinctions between publish, preview, and save draft. It’s not obvious how to write a post and set it to appear automatically at a later time. And that’s just the writing-a-post stuff, not the admin controls, the use of plug-ins, or the tradeoffs that come with switching your theme.
The second route to having a blog is to have your own domain (like my www.daveswhiteboard.com), to have that domain hosted (by a hosting service or, for those with lots of tech time, on your own), and to install blog software on your domain the way I’ve installed WordPress on mine.
None of that is all that hard, necessarily — but it’s comparable to learning to drive a standard transmission car when you only know how to drive an automatic. There’s more stuff going on, more that you have to think about, concepts you need to incorporate, skills you need to build. The effort can well be worthwhile (either for the stick shift or for the domain), but it’s not essential. At least not in the way that food, shelter, clothing, and shortbread are.
My own impression of a blog, way back when, was “here’s my big thought of the day.” After nearly four years, I know quite a few bloggers. Most of them don’t see their blog that way. Still, you can see the parallel with the (relatively) uninformed picture of Twitter as “here’s what I had for lunch.”
My first blog is a collection of stories by and about people from Cape Breton Island, where I was born. Most of them aren’t by me. My second blog began as a way to keep in touch with my parents, who’d been online for a few years but had trouble when it came to reading email, finding items they’d previously read, and opening attachments.
My point is not that you ought to blog for your family stories or to keep in touch with your parents. Instead, it’s that if you’ve got something you want to share with one or more people at a distance, and you think you might have a number of things to share, then a blog’s one way you can do that.
A longtime colleague and friend has a serious-hobby interest–to preserve his privacy, I’ll say this interest is in Japanese ceramics, because it’s not. He collects Japanese ceramics, he makes trips to examine them, he meets often with people also interested in ceramics.
He asked about making a web page to summarize lectures about Japanese ceramics, I suggested a blog to accomplish this–far less a technical leap for him than a full-blown website. I walked him through WordPress.com’s setup. He made practice posts (so he learned by doing simple versions of the real task). I’ve spent five or six hours all told helping him maintain and troubleshoot his blog.
He does almost nothing the way I would. The most recent post doesn’t appear on the main page. He has white type on a dark background. He has dozens of photos in a single post. He has enormously long posts (no “click to read more” for him). He doesn’t allow comments.
And yet…
He gets email from strangers who thank him profusely for sharing in this way. Guest lecturers collaborate with him because they’re so pleased to have their material circulated more widely, especially by someone attuned to nuance in the world of Japanese ceramics. He’s chugged along for two years with a slow rise to about two posts a month.
I’ve learned a lot from helping him. In particular, I’ve been reminded of the difference between an option, a preference, and a recommendation. You could argue that his blog might be more “successful” if he changed some of his practice–but I believe he knows what he wants to say, how he wants to say it, and quite a bit about who might want to hear it said.
CC-licensed images:
Tow-away hours image by Brett L.
1940 Oldsmobile manual image by Hugo90.
Dec 222009
One strand in the sleave of lrnchat topics a few weeks ago was the lurker, who hangs around a discussion but doesn’t take part.
I’ve engaged in online discussions since 1984. “Lurker” as a term often has a negative connotation; highly active participants seem to regard lurkers as unreasonably shy, terminally silent, or possibly parasitic.
Geeze. Lighten up.
I’ve done more than my share of lurking, although as I said in the #lrnchat discussion, “I don’t lurk so much as lollygag.”
The real topic on #lrnchat was how internal social networks affect the performance of an organization, and what people can do to further that impact. A lot of the conversation centered microblogging, wikis, and other tools that can foster collaboration and cooperation.
Harold Jarche makes a useful distinction between those two terms: you collaborate with others via plans and structures; you cooperate via freely-chosen connections. Especially for people who work in (or with) organizations, both have their role.
Lurking’s actually not a bad way to get to know a new group. Outward-focused chatty early adopters might disagree, but some of us like (or have learned) to look around first. We’re seeing how the locals do things. We’re working out some of the modes of engagement.
(And, yes, we just may be noticing who talks too much about too little–you longtimers have that nailed; we’re just coming up to speed.)
As the #lrnchat discussion flowed, more than one person cited the value of someone showing you what he or she gets out of social networks. If you know a person who seems reasonably sane yet uses Twitter, you’re probably more open to hearing why, and to asking about the benefits that person sees.
Someone prone to lurking could read the #lrnchat transcript, maybe find a few voices of reason, and start following those people–on Twitter, or through whatever link they have in their Twitter profile (LinkedIn, Facebook, a blog, a website).
If you’re prone to encourage active participation by lurkers, good for you–just don’t turn that encouragement into nagging. If on the other hand you’re prone to lengthy lurking, I think there’s genuine value to Hellmanism, a philosophy of interpersonal behavior found on jars of mayonnaise:
Keep cool but don’t freeze.
CC-licensed image of mayo jars adapted from a photo by clango.
As a tangent to my recent post about social learning, a chart I saw recently keeps nudging itself onto the front burner. The source, apparently, is Janice Szabos, in a 1989 issue of Challenge Magazine. She was comparing characteristics of bright children versus gifted children.
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A bright child
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A gifted child
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I couldn’t find the actual source, nor much about Szabos’s background–though the list in various forms is all over gifted-child, home-schooling, and other child-learning sites.
I see the descriptors as similar to those for broad categories like “song” or “chair”–not every item applies to any one instance. They could, of course, be a kind of mirror–who wouldn’t want to be seen as a good guesser, keenly observant, or thriving on complexity?
I take issue with some: The gifted child “already knows?” The bright child “is a technician (rather than an inventor)?” But that’s not why I’ve put the list here.
The descriptors could also be a way that trainers and facilitators might describe participants in structured learning (my preferred term for “formal learning”). I’ve spent a lot of time with trainers in large organizations, and not a few of these people might lean toward the “bright” participant. The descriptors to me are much more immediate in nature: the people are working with the content, staying on task, paying attention.
Which isn’t all bad. More and more I see structured training in an organization as a focused way to encourage learning around a particular set of skills. Those skills in general tend to be basic, procedural, and what I’ll call inductive. By mastering them, you’re better able to expand into more advanced, situational skills where there isn’t a single correct answer to a problem.
That doesn’t mean you have to master those basic, procedural things first. You could learn to solve customer complaints, for example, without first learning to use the order-tracking system–but not knowing how to use that system will soon feel like not knowing how to drive: you can’t get where you want to, easily.
…And of course you might look at how you manage your own learning and see which terms fit better. In essence, I see the “bright” side as remaining within a given context, and the “gifted” side as going beyond it. Going beyond can be troublesome (even to yourself).
Most likely, the two columns are an à la carte menu, rather that prix fixe.
CC-licensed photo by erin MC hammer.
Dec 152009
Is all learning “social?” In some ways, that’s a metaphysical question. I’ve learned by reading and then applying what I read to some problem– like fiddling with the style sheet on my blog.
I suppose I’ve interacted with the person who wrote the book, and indirectly with the people who see the results of what I’ve done. Or with myself, if I’m the only one who can tell the difference.
Parsing this can be fun, like pre-Vatican II discussions of Catholic practice. “Brother Andrew–if it was Friday at the South Pole, and I had a ham sandwich, could I walk over to where it would be Saturday and eat the sandwich? Would I have to wait before walking back to Friday?”
Most of the time, I think learning evidence itself through interaction with others (so, “social”). More important, to me “learning” demands application. Until you retrieve the facts, exercise the skill, attempt a new arrangement–do something–I don’t quite see how you can claim to have learned.
With that meandering out of the way, I’d like to highlight a highly useful series by Jane Hart: C4LPT’s Guide to Social Learning. She discusses the shift from elearning to social learning, discusses social media, and gives examples of social media in learning.
Most helpful to me: Jane identified five types of learning. Harold Jarche looked at those and created the chart you see on the right, showing the amount of “directedness” for each category.
- IOL: intra-organizational learning
- GDL: group-directed learning
- PDL: personally-directed learning
- ASL: accidental and serendipitous learning
- FSL: formal structured learning
(So the list and the chart are a nice example of collaboration. I thank Jane for clarifying this for me, and have edited this post accordingly.)
A highlight of Jane’s series is an extensive list of examples. In a grid, she provides examples of different social media tools as they can be used for each of the types of learning in Harold’s chart.
There’s plenty more, including discussions for each of the five categories. Take a look; see if there’s anything you can…well, learn.
“Talking to self” image adapted under a CC license from a photo by Leeni! / Kathleen.
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