Personal Blogs

With thanks to a fellow OU student who asked 'why?'

I’ve blogged since Sept 1999.

More importantly I’ve kept a diary since March 1976 (I was 14 1/2)  ... with substantial two or three year breaks I should add in the 80s, 90s and 00s ... and only on a few occasions ‘every day of every year.’

The diary was never read by others and never of interest to them. Except on one occasion I was aware my girlfriend was looking at it so I wrote some especially nice things about her and she did likewise. A comment, you could say. That was a one off. (She also read that on our first date I thought she had bad breath. Lesson learnt. If you are going to express your mind, keep it private or lie, or jsut leave things out ... and keep it under lock and key).

The appeal in the early days of blogging was to have an electronic form of the ‘journal’ I kept, however this gradually changed into something quite different with the then new additions of ‘friends’ and ‘favourites’ and all the other ‘sticky things’ (technical web term) that are common-place. 

Two things start to happen

1) you make a couple of ‘friends’ you relate to really well and find you’re only truly interested in them and you can develop ideas, support each other and so on i.e. collaboration. (We formed a successful writers group).

2) you go crazy for the statistics and start to wonder why certain pages are read and which get the most hits ... and what you have to do or say to get more hits.

This OU Blog-a-long-a-thon scroll is better for the lack of the many tools, quirks and quasi-personalisation tools that commercial blogsites now offer. 

At this stage the realisation is that you are no longer keeping a journal, nor is it private. Indeed you very quickly find there is a considerable amount of fiction, flaming and writing gibberish simply to fill a page and have your profile picked up in some blog rank-a-thingy somewhere.

I call this turning into an 'e-j'.

It's value is ephemeral. It is not a journal anymore. There's no value in privacy, indeed 'disclosure' and 'exposure' become the way to deliver a high ranking blog. My tactic was to circumvent the entire blog premise by removing any sense of it being a 'log,' writing entries that are tagged or stored by theme, rather than the day they are written on.

I try not to do it in what I call ‘OU Land’ where I am increasingly trying to be more professional and circumspect.

The temptation to write to provoke, or to intrigue is still there which will cause me trouble when it gets to submitting anything for ‘reflection’ because there may not be anything there ... which is why I am starting to post the ‘bland, objective, reflective kind of thing required’ but keeping it private.

There’s a piece on the addictive nature of games and the Internet in the New Scientist. (See below. I wrote about it last week).

I would say between 2002 and 2006 I probably spent far, far too long blogging. When you post 10,000 words on one day and have 1.6 million words online (largely unpublishable farting into cyberspace) I think you could say there was a problem.

Most of this serves no good purpose at all, other than tinkering at the QWERTY keyboard, the piano equivalent of playing chop-sticks. i.e. you quicklky find you are getting the same, repetitive tune.

I never, or rarely read over my old, hand written diaries (a decade is the right kind of timespan to afford them any worth), yet reading a page in a blog is a click away, a search word away. It's as if very day and any day is given equal value. But is it of value to learn that I tend to wash my hair on a Thursday?

Feedback is like gold, it is recognition, and in a tiny way rewarding and flattering.

Once again, there can be an obsessive hankering for comment, to the degree that your views and what you write is geared to nothing else, whilst in OU Land, a type of blogging experience, within the context of academic study, 'hits' count for nothing, whereas there is the potential to gain marks through objective reflection.

And finally ...

Blogging transmogrified through comments, friends and favourites away from being an online journal, to being a form of social networking. The blogging landscape is now so varied and vast that it often ceases to be blogging at all.

Facebook is the equivalent of blogging onto a Post it note that you then stick to the side of a bus.

In an effort to bring myself into the 21st century technologically I am revisiting Filemaker Pro as a piece of software I have used since it was developed in 1994, though not upgraded in eight years.

Whilst it is a relief to find current versions are familiar in terms of the way fields are created and popualted with 'assets' it is a pain that to transfer material I am going to have to retrofit an earlier version of Filemaker and use this as a electronic stepping stone.

The reward will be to have data that I am familiar with that I can then manipulate and share in a Web 2.0 way. The intention is then to populate this with a substantial number of documents to familiarise myself with how it operates with text. It used to be the case that files could not contain much more than 150 words.

Then I will use Filemaker Pro to build by OU e-portfolio for H808.

The problem no doubt remains of 'interoperability.' Does my using Filemaker Pro necessitate others to have the same software? To use its extensive functionality, probably so ... however, on a 31 day free trial I  think much could covered and from this user's point of view, the investment in a light version of Filemaker Pro may be more beneficial that going down to the route of a customised PLE of various recommended software tools, or going for Google Docs.

Meanwhile my OU Blog and MyStuff get the lot! (Just to be safe)

Although Weller applies this thinking to VLEs the same must apply to e-portfolios.

KEY ISSUES

• Exchange of learning resources
• Passing of data between institutions
• Multiple platforms
• Software applications that communicate with other students

'Agnostic’

Interoperability

The argument for standardisation is made in relation to electricity plugs.

• platform agnostic
• language agnostic
• IPR terms to share

Modularisation – like music through Napster and the commercially through iTunes.

Problems

• semantic
• modularisation
• security
• quality
• licensing
• development tools

Standards

Is interoperability in relation to the transferability of data and resources like issues of access for disabled people?

Transferability adds a dimension from a point moving forward, as well as going back, and weaving across.

'The challenge is not how to get at the news, but how to keep the relentless deluge of information at bay'.

BBC Radio 4. 11.55am 17 September 2010.

And the last thing we should be doing with this deluge of information (generated by ourselves and/or others) is to worry about how to store it.

The last thing on Noah's mind was, 'I need to build a dam to store all this rain'. He wanted to save humanity (and all animal kind) from the deluge, so he made a big boat.

We don't need more repositories and storage devices we need boats that can keep us afloat on this digital ocean, rather than being sunk by it.

From Our Own Correspondent. BBC Radio 4. 11.55.52 am

Annual Summit of 150 World Leaders. Special Gathering to look at the state of world poverty. $100b still needed.

Bridget Kendal reflects on where she was on 6^th September of the year 2000.

She was at the UN where the UN Secretary opened the Millennium Summit of the United Nations, there were 100 Heads of State, three Crown Princes  and getting on for 50 Prime Ministers  ... all gathered  to consider the challenges of the year ahead.

'I can tell you where journalists like me were', she says, sounding like Joanna Lumely c 1977, 'burrowing through tapes and tangled wires, struggling to find out about speeches being made in the assembly above, at the time the largest gathering of head of states, computer connections not working, no wireless hand-held devices to help you out, it makes you feel quite hot and anxious just to think about it ...

A decade later', says Bridget Kendal, 'covering UN summits is less of a technological battle, the challenge is not how to get at the news, but how to keep the relentless deluge of information at bay.

If you are looking at ways to store 'the deluge of information' you or others are creating, if you horde every picture taken, every word written then you are trying to build a dam.

Like Noah, you need a boat.

An e-boat.

Management is not a profession. Harvard Business Review

I came across this, read and rejoiced.

http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=51600603&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The OU has stimulated my mind suitably over the last seven months to oblige a subscription to the New Scientist.

I was picking it up every other week for the Web Tech and other 'e-' related topics. These now feature regularly. My wife has ten years in medical market research, though not a Scientist, she will often have an opinion on anything that touches her world of work. It is better read that the weekend colour supplement. In fact, I've ditched the Guardian once a week for the New Scientist once a week with all other stories and news prompted by a sentence on TV, a couple of sentences on the Radio and a paragraph or two online.

Beware the Irresistible Internet

Is it addictive?

Expecting or wishing to look at numerous e-learning style products for H808 I found I had spent 3 hours today doing this with Dropbox and Facebook. I wish I hadn't. I haven't even started to make Facebook sing, so would prefer to exit in tact. And I suspect that Dropbox, like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter is just a neat trap and that within six months we will be enrolled into a myriad of appealing, complementary services that we'll be paying for by subscription.

• technology-dependence clinic (Richard Graham)
• young men stuck in multiplayer online gaming environments
• Women and adolescent girls using instant messaging platforms and social media compulsively
• obsession with screen-based media (Ofcom)
• Blackberry-addicted white-collar workers

Hear say or fact? Not evidence and the citations are sparse. But of interest.

• Is there such a thing as an OU obsessive?
• A blogging obsessive (certainly).
• If you have an obsessive nature.

'Now, the potent combination of omnipresent technologies and our addictive nature means more casualties look inevitable.' Paul Marks. Senior Technology Correspondent

REFERENCE

Marks, P. (2010) New Scientist. Volume 207. No. 2777. pp24-25.

Where and how do I share in a secure online environment with 40 swimming teachers, 12 admin staff:

Swimming teaching and coaching plans.

• NPTS Grade 4-10
• Squad Competitive Swimming County-Regional-National Standard
• Micro & Macro-cyles

About 200 documents

• Squad Books
• Club Photos
• Competition Details

Workforce Development

• Courses
• CPD
• Licensing
• CRB checks
• Induction
• Mentoring
• Meetings

Parents

• Newsletters by group and grade

This is has been a headache for years, which I feel can be resolved and better managed with something like Google Docs. Whatever Facebook can offer, its image is tarnished, so I can't see anyone taking me seriously if I place and lock documents there.

I'm very aware of Data Protection issues so none of the 'data base' info of our 1,000 members will go beyond a handful of people who keep it on their PCs. However this is some info that must be shared with specific teachers and coaches.

We have a website, but there is a limit to what volunteers can be expected to do and manage therefore 'free' software and service, or at small cost.

Early days to believe photos and video clips could be put here too for teaching-training purposes.

My thoughts thus far:

Google Docs

EduBlogs

Any other suggestions to give a go before I start migrating things here?

This will need to link with contact details in Outlook.

Working with a number of other blogs one thing that strikes me that has to be of enormous worth by committing to the OU platform is the lack of spam.

This may be a basic set up, but it is good at the thing that matters most - permitting the generation of and sharing of content.

Without adverts popping up, spam (deviously written to look like a genuine comment you will find) and the impression that the provider really does want you to upgrade.

What matters in a learning environment are the comments of one or two, perhaps regular readers ... whose blogs you read too.

(whether ot not you care to say 'hi' or comment)

You do not need a presence on a commercial website with a readership of millions to share your OU learning experience. In any case, you'll be lost like a needle in a stack of needles.

Content should be King.

As the list of e-portfolios to try grows I find my opening yet another invitation to 'give 'em a go.'

Adobe Share

Having lived very happily with many Adobe products this last decade I feel inclined by brand loyalty to give it a go.

Meanwhile I'm newly signed into:

Zoho

Google Docs

& Mahara

While continuing to load My Stuff ... with My OU Stuff.

I'm keeping a 'log' of my progress into Compendium private for now. I may in due course edit this down into some succinct steps picking out anything that may trip up the unwary or some new take on how it can be used.

Meanwhile, bouyant as a result of advice and suggestions given by other OU students I am going to do some housekeeping on usernames and passwords then give some other software a go if only to have a break from Compendium.

If you are looking at Compendium for the first time do get in touch, we could get our heads around this together.

Yes, two heads are better than one.

Trips. Finding out why I had no volume on the laptop so that I could view the animation. Eventually dig through the system set up to bring the volume up. With a 12 and 14 year old using this laptop from time to time wit hearphones might explain this.

Compendium is a visual way for organising ideas and linking documents and webpages.

Knowledge Mapping Software

• Double Click
• List view, visual view
• Keeping track of websites and documents and how they connect to ideas, questions that you may be thinkng about, it gives you a way of linking and relating to arguments you mjay be wrestling with
• A way of Linking together different resources - tagging them.
• The spheres are 'maps; that can be opened, clocked or dragged.
• Mindmapping with the affordances of drag and drop, multilayered, easily copied, changed and/or shared.
• Tagging so that you can find them later on.

Trips: Despite following the animation to the letter and creating a map I cannot see how create a 'new document.' I have to wonder if pen and paper, grabbed, scanned and shared, wouldn't achieve much the same effect despite the infinte layers and links that Compendium affords, it is at least simple.

Trips: Elsewhere, learning Outlook for the first time, I repeatedly find having put in a hundred or so contact details, that I cannot reliably send a mail to a selected group. I am blind to the required button.

Just spent the last two hours in conversation with a university contemporary and colleague from the 1980s and 1990s with whom I produced numerous training and information films. I would produce and write, he'd direct and edit. Last job we did together? 1996, the launch of the European Stock Exchange EASDAQ. (Which coinsided with the home birth of my son

The match of skills that worked in the past will as a result be renewed - he is highly technical and has been generating video material for smartphones for the last year. We've both approached online learning from different perspectives, but have a child-like curiosity still.

We laughed over a comment, very 80s, that a senior producer in corporate video production made to us as we started out, that people can be put into three categories: maps, taps and chaps.

Maps. Making and fixing stuff.

Taps. Accountants and writing.

Chaps. Selling and getting on with people.

My thinking is that a basic team of three needs one of each, though two would do as long as all bases are covered. He is the map, I'm the tap, so we need a 'chap.'

The language may be arcane, but the thinking is sound.

Now that I am happy on Skype I'm more than happy to use this tool more often.

I have several other tools to use though, e-portfolios, wikis, compendium ...

A forum is not a tutorial, yet it aspires to be so.

The tutor is afforded no more privileges than any other contributor, democratic, but hardly giving them the attributes or affordances of the 'chair.' (Although I’m sure they have some useful control and buttons behind the scenes!)

A tutorial works best one-to-one (like therapy), face-to-face, or in a small group, say six at most, discussing in an synchronous environment.

(James Turner, Policy Director at the Sutton Trust suggested supplementary tutoring of school students one-to-one was most common, two-to-one worked even better because of the collaboratory experience. BBC Radio 4 10.00 Tuesday 7th September 2010, Accessed again 16.00 Saturday 12th September 2010)

You get a cue from the tutor to speak or contribute while body language and human politeness typically results in each person making contributions. Often the person who says nothing for long spells has the most insightful contribution because they have been listening.

I respect the person who says nothing the most – they have the most to say.

Twelve or more is a class. This is an e-classroom.

Easy to define as such, just consider the numbers.

I have taught classes of forty+ in secondary schools and taken ‘classes’ of sixty (with assistance) in an eight lane swimming pool. Numbers mean something, one to one is perfection, with two to one you lose nothing (and academics suggest you probably gain).

Moving up from this ... a tutor group in the real world might be six.

No surprises when things don’t work so well, whatever the affordances, or excuses of asynchronous learning/messaging when there are groups of twelve or more.

Asynchronous forums are not a listening environment, nor due to the limitations of an OU Forums affordances and attributes does in foster the kind of discussion you'd have in real life.

A suggested improvement would be:

1) Put the tutor in the chair and have this position reflected in the layout of and the way message 'tumble' into the forum.

2) Compress or concertina all messages by an individual so that the 'weight' of their message, either the frequency of contribution or length is not given prominence. i.e. the short, infrequent post has equal weight with the more verbose or frequent contribution. This mimics real life.

3) To make all things equal the images files and silhouettes are reduced in size, to a pinpoint if necessary. Their only relevance is to identify who is speaking or who spoke, in which case our names would do. I’d just as happily pick a character icon from the Monopoly or Cludo, my gender, face, mood at the time of the picture etc: are not only irrelevant but they are probably counter to my usual stern disposition.

4) Use something like Harvard's 'Rotisserie' system, deploy games and other events tactically i.e hosts/tutors and other strategically deployed postgraduate and/or PhD students are invited in from time to time to make a contribution.

Some suggestions. Some ideas.