Post in response to the H817 Open Design Studio work block
Three weeks into this block now. Only just becoming familiar with the technologies our project team has chosen use to communicate (we're primarily using Google+). The faff of having log in to multiple areas is off-putting. This is reminscent of students on the NPQICL programme (this is going back a few years mind) not engaging with online forums. They were very happy to communicate via email, as this is what they were already logged into at work, but reluctant to faff about logging into a separate system.
I'm also experiencing Google+ communities in a similar way to Twitter - as 'a stream'. Now Twitter is a kind of stream - I have some measure of control, through who I follow, on how fast flowing that stream is. In this way, I mitigate my own weakness at handling information.
Another point to note is that Twitter is a recreational stream; I can dip my toe in or take a plunge depending how appealing it seems to be at the time. Our team Google+ community is different in this important respect. It is not recreational. It is an arena where we are meeting and discussing the work of our project. Unlike a project meeting (in the real world, or say via some synchronous technology such as Skype or Google Hangouts) it is essentially asynchronous. Obviously this has its advantages, but a disadvantage is that it's difficult, to exert any sort of control over the speed of the stream.
The speed is the product of the size of the project team and the frequency of their posting. Now, I'm lucky enought to be part of a small but very enthusiastic project team for the Open Design Studio activity. However, their very enthusiasm and resultant rate of posting leaves me feeling overwhelmed and constantly behind in the conversation.
Thankfully, we have a Hangout session planned for this evening, where I shall hopefully get a grip on enough of this task to feel I am swimming along at a pace where I can still feel useful to my colleagues.
