Here's a link to a wonderful poem on learning http://internettime.com/wordpress2/?p=24

My question is - Are the words, "Technorati Tags" part of the poem, indicating how he learns, or there to tag the poem itself? 

Why do people write in an arena where strangers and acquaintances, not necessarily friendly, as well as friends and enemies, can read what you've written?  Where does the attraction towards candour and forthright opinion that is a characteristic of blogs come from?

I can see that part of it is identity; this is who I am. I am constructing  myself through words. Sometimes I don't know what I think until I hear myself say it, or hear (in my head) the words as I tap them out on a keyboard. And then there's writing in a journal or diary by hand. Is that different because it's in a place, a book in my home, where I have almost complete control over who gets to read my words? Or because I am using one hand and shaping the letters using my small motor skills to trace out a looping path that contains and carries the residue of those tracings from all my previous life, culminating in the moment of the current tracing? I certainly appear to connect my impulse toward poetic thought with the idea of hand-writing even though I am only thinking about it while keyboarding;->

Identity - back to this sub-topic. I speak and/or write (by hand or keyboard) therefore I am. There is a drive in me that results in the sounds or scratchings that indicate meaning, and then that meaning both reveals and shapes me. And back to blogs etc., I write on the web so people (including me) can know I exist?

I think identity is a big part of it, but not all of it. I think the pleasure of following an impulse is part of it, not stopping to think, just ranting on, just riding that train of thought to the end of the line and then further, pushing through the wilderness as far as the direction of the thought and the inertia of the emotion associated with the thought will take you. But does that metaphor simply associate impulse with fear? The train engine crashing into wilderness, leaving the rails for the unknown and the stasis at the end of inertia?

In a discussion on the permanence of web-writing, one of my students told the story of writing out her frustration with an assignment on the page of a wiki and, in a flourish of impulse, saving it, thinking she could and would come back and delete it. That was how she discovered that wikis are forever, that you can go back a page and find what you tried to erase. A friend of hers, and an amused teacher, alerted her that her words were still accessible, even if buried.

Wher I was first learning about email, I heard, possibly apocryphal, stories about people losing jobs because they'd written something rude about an email from a boss and then accidently replied, not to just their friend and co-worker, but to All. It's like talking about what you really think about your boss (or any other person who has power over whether you get what you want) in the washroom, while they're in a cubicle. We humans sometimes enjoy going to an extreme and saying things we wouldn't want overheard and/or replayed to us at a later date.

Do we always say or write something we'd want public tomorrow or years from now when we have constructed a different identity, moving on from where we were then? Is the risk so small that it's silly to let it block your inner voice? Is this something only politicians or future politicians should worry about?

Is this an age-related issue? Do people get more discreet as we age? Do we understand the risks and possibilities of self-disclosure in a more detailed way and behave accordingly? Or perhaps it's an era-related issue. Those who are older now, in these early days of the web, have grown up with the idea of keeping some things secret, and of the ease with which scandal can arise with its dangers and damage.

Is this also a personality issue? Some people just self-disclose more than others and these are the ones who "speak their minds" and/or blurt out what they are thinking at that moment.

I am sitting alone, face-to interface with my online computer, and I feel safe and private, like I would in a washroom, but it is a public space, much more so than public washrooms are public. What I write is public anywhere on the World Wide Web, and can be linked to and popped into prominence anywhere and any time. That's just reality - and think how popular reaity shows are!

So why be open on blogs? Well, the web and blogs are making honesty more recognizable and valued. In the late 1990s, the price of term life insurance dropped precipitively, because Quotesmith compared the prices on the web. Suddenly secrecy was diminished. Value comparisons are big on the web. In Kline & Burstein's blog!, they speak repeatedly of the need for a blogger to have an individual "voice" - readers want an "interesting" personality shaping what they read, a little bit of charisma coming through the screen. They also tell a number of stories of attempts to deceive an/or errors being quickly pointed to in blogs. Personality (plus writing craft) and (perceived) honesty attract readers to blogs.

Perhaps what it comes down to is finding out how open is open enough for you and your readers, and where the line between interesting self-disclosure and off-putting or boring self-disclosure is. Experience and discretion and energy and flow - we have to find the balance for ourselves and our readers. We are shaping and learning the rhetoric for blogging.

From Stephen Downes - a link to an article by Erick Schonfeld, Om Malik, and Michael V. Copeland on Web 2.0, which they call the Next Net -

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/23/smbusiness/business2_nextnet

Big changes are already in motion -

• "Driven by ubiquitous broadband, cheap hardware, and open-source software, the Web is mutating into a radically different beast than it has been. And that is leading to the creation of entirely new kinds of companies, new business models, and oceans of new opportunity.

• We are in the early stages of what might be better thought of as the Next Net. The Next Net will encompass all digital devices, from PC to cell phone to television. Its defining characteristics include the ability to interact instantaneously with any of the more than 1 billion Web users across the globe -- not by, say, instant messaging, but by evolving instant-voice-messaging and instant-video-messaging apps that will make today's e-mail and IM seem crude.
  

• The Next Net is deeply collaborative: People from across the planet can work together on the same task, and products or tools can be rapidly tweaked and improved by the collective wisdom of the entire online" world."

(My apologies for using bullets to indent this quotation)

This is as important to education, maybe even more important, than to business, IMHO. 

I remember being pleased to be called an "autodidact". Later, I was surprised to discover that being called someone who learned on their own without the structure and certification of an educational institution carried a somewhat negative connotation. Just for having the interest and discipline and resources to learn! I now think that the feelings around the word "autodidact" will be changing with the advent of Web 2.0 and this part of the blogosphere; I believe "autodidact" will become rich in positive connotations.

Let me explain. I respect the impact educational institutions can have; I've spent my life in them both as a student and as a teacher. In both roles, I can learn a lot IF I am given some choice, some respect, and real deadlines. (When choice is limited, respect is seen as unnecessary, and deadlines are arbitrary, I think educational institutions actively block learning - but that's another rant for another posting.)

Back on topic - I've learned lots as a student, and lots as a teacher trying to help students learn what they want to learn about. My M.Ed. research was qualitative; I found Narrative Inquiry led to very rich research and learning. Being curious about how people learn and teach on both the individual, "what happened and how does it feel" level and on the theoretical level gave me learning "legs" - two for balance and movement!

The opportune accidents of life kept my learning very active. I, a tech-avoider, reader, writer, and writing teacher, found myself in a professional situation where I had to learn the basics of how to write, file manage on a computer, and use the Web - so I could teach it. Fear and a sense of inadequacy were my dominant reponses. Some friends who knew about computer stuff told me I knew more than I gave myself credit for, and were helpful. For example, I learned how to add attachments to email after a desperate search through  Friday afternoon halls and then taught it on the following Monday;->

Just when I had a little knowledge of the computer and the Web, a limited set of the basics, my college's then president started the college on a mobile initiative. Some programs joined and in five years about 6000 students were on laptops rented from the school, using WebCT. We teachers were placed in a demanding situation but provided some real support. The IT department was genuinely and consciously classroom supportive, there was some time release, and a very active grassroots professional development committee, DELTA3 PD. The brilliant chair, Sandra Hodder, who pulls in anyone she can, found me in the halls, hauled me into a committee meeting, kept the weekly meetings focused on  activities, and encouraged laughter and fun. I had found my learning community.

I became a competent teacher using my (school-provided) laptop and actively learning from my DELTA3 PD colleagues. I began discovering that there were lots of sites, and many good ones, that could support both my learning and my teaching. (I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel ;-> ) I gradually began to see that we had done something amazing at Sheridan, working up to having 6000 students on laptops in just 5 years. I saw many reluctant teachers cope and improve in their use of educational technology, largely, I believe, because they had little choice (if they had professional pride) and because so many of us leading the PD activities were limited in our knowledge and not at all technically oriented. The situation of little choice in learning, but having freedom in what aspects we learned for our purposes, and being in a community of non-experts actively sharing across program silos - this created a wonderful learning opportunity.

I began to believe that what was happening at Sheridan was unique. I began to believe that we should share what was being learned by our experience. I built my own website despite not knowing HTML. I learned a lot about the Web just by doing things for my own purposes.  I co-edited a, now outdated, Journal on the Sheridan experience. I took a course from a much more technically-inclined colleague on using the Web in Teaching. I kept giving PD workshops in what I was currently learning. I worked with and learned from my DELT3 PD committee colleagues. I decided to return to graduate school.

When I wrote my thesis, Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry was my approach, and this added turbocharging to my mixed metaphor of how (my) learning happens. I explored using stories, theory, and my multimedia imagination. It was wonderful, thrilling, exciting, delightful, and has speeded up and intensified my ability and desire to live life as a learner, especially a learner of Web possibilities and purposes.

Currently, I teach one course, which does drive my learning by being my current project, but my learning is autodidactic. I learn because I want to learn, about whatever excites me, which currently is writing and learning on and with the Web. I learn by spending time on the Web - especially with blogs like Christopher D. Sessums' - which is a course in and of itself! (Thanks Chris!!!)

What I want to do is use my late-blooming nerdness to help technophobes learn how to enjoy and benefit from the Web, and the reluctant or uninformed to see the possibilities for learning and teaching using the Web. Of course, I'd also like to be invited to speak at conferences ;-> using my weakness (not from a tech background) as my strength (the Web is an easy-to-use communication tool that is learnable!)

I even use some HTML occasionally - as you can see with my use of red headings in the wiki I'm developing - only because I figured out how to put an HTML cheatsheet link on my toolbar! (Another thank-you to Chris Sessums because his comments on my posts led me to explore his wiki inspired me to create my own "sandbox" and play.)

So I no longer fear computers, I have found an online learning community, and I am a proud autodidact! 

Bryan Alexander has published a fascinating examination of what social computing is and how it can be used in education in the March/April Educause Review, entitled Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?
Here is one short quote about one of many possibilities.

• How can social bookmarking play a role in higher education? Pedagogical applications stem from their affordance of collaborative information discovery. For instance, researchers at all levels (students, faculty, staff) can quickly set up a social bookmarking page for their personal and/or professional inquiries. The Penntags project at the University of Pennsylvania (http://tags.library.upenn.edu/) and Harvard’s H2O (http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/home.do) are examples. First, they act as an “outboard memory,” a location to store links that might be lost to time, scattered across different browser bookmark settings, or distributed in e-mails, printouts, and Web links. Second, finding people with related interests can magnify one’s work by learning from others or by leading to new collaborations. Third, the practice of user-created tagging can offer new perspectives on one’s research, as clusters of tags reveal patterns (or absences) not immediately visible by examining one of several URLs. Fourth, the ability to create multi-authored bookmark pages can be useful for team projects, as each member can upload resources discovered, no matter their location or timing. Tagging can then surface individual perspectives within the collective. Fifth, following a bookmark site gives insights into the owner’s (or owners’) research, which could play well in a classroom setting as an instructor tracks students’ progress. Students, in turn, can learn from their professor’s discoveries.
  

 

I strongly recommend the entire article.

Christopher Sessums has inspired me to think - again. What makes Edubloggers tick? he asks, and then gives some answers and invites more through commenting. Is it for the audience and fame? he asks. "Would you blog if no one read your posts?"

While I have what seems to be the normal ;-> human urge for recognition, I also have the human urge for contact. And looking at that aspect of my blogging urge, I come to another recognition that Sessums has described:

• I think what I love best about blogging is that it allows me to peer into the thought processes of others. Being a people-watcher, I have always been fascinated by what makes people do or say the things they do.
  

Yes. I'm nosy, curious, what have you. I can't remember where I first heard the word: "blog", probably through the inimitable Stephen Downes whose daily newsletters I really miss. What I am sure of, is that I read blogs long before I started writing this strange amalgam of (private) diary and (public) shouting out. (I maintain, as I have written about before, that blogs are a whole new genre category.)

I read blogs because I'm nosy  curious. I read blogs because they are an undemanding place to learn. I spend quite a lot of time reading blogs. Mostly without commenting or giving the writer any feedback. I read blogs and add them to my Bloglines account so I can keep reading them. And while I read them because I'm entertained by the writing and the sense of the person who is writing, I read them mostly to learn.

I want to learn both how, to overcome my technophobic background, and why, to get ideas for what I can do, whether it's part of creating a course structure and assignments, or showing my Dad, using email, how to open an audio file. (I use a low-tech approach of screen shots, inserted in Word, with arrows and informative call-outs added, and a further screen shot, saved as a jpeg and attached. Hey, if it works and it's easy, I'm for it.)

So I read blogs so I can listen in on ideas and then use and extend them. I read blogs to learn, and I write them to think and to join the conversation, and maybe to be read. I imagine a real audience might be possible.