Further reading upgrades. My "further reading" lists now include excerpts from the referring page. Also, you can now subscribe to the Further Reading RSS feed, which includes titles, links, and excerpts of all referrers that link to anything posted in the past few days. Updated: now with permalinks in many cases. (243 words) [dive into mark]Wonderful! The upward spiral of comprehensiveness and complexity seems more likely as weblog community discussion and inference gets a big boost.
As Eric Benson of Mockerybird put's it:
"No new protocol necessary: An interesting new take on the technology that tracks referrers and trackbacks and pings, Mark Pilgrim [b] has flipped the coin around so that instead of having everyone pinging everyone else to see who's talking about what, any site can now take a look at all the other sites that are linking to it and extract the paragraph of text around the link to their site automatically.This is cool (from a technology perspective) for many reasons. People implementing this will have instant results, since it doesn't require a critical mass of referrers to have installed the software. More importantly than that, however, is that it puts the emphasis back on the conversation, where it should've always been in the first place. Finally, it's easier to "get", which is one of the primary obstacles in TrackBack's road to fame and fortune. "
I'm processing the contribution in different yet supplemental way. I'm imagining a learning bootstrap operation. It goes something like this:
1. I puzzle over then think about and subsequently write thoughts about a set of ideas.
2. I title my essay in a way that reflects the set of ideas I'm concerned with.
3. Google (through, say, Googleit) comes up with sources related to my blog title. (After I've submitted at least a draft.)Thus I can immediately inspect and choose from among reading possibilities that will add to the number of my present set of ideas as well as enhancing the sophistication of my understanding of their relationship.
4. Marks's 'further reading contribution' collects summary paragraphs from blog's which were written in direct response to my entry. From these I may well get very focused suggestion for extension and repair and interlinking of the ideas I've expressed.
5. I write more and at greater depth. As I get more focused and sophisticated (with the title and writings demonstrating both enhanced focus and sophistication) googleit search results propose correlated readings and 'further readings' from onlookers, nurturers, mentors and critics keep apace.
This weblog-based upward spiral stands in stark contrast to the norm of formal learning of not so long ago: Take a course, take tests, write a paper, get a grade, take more courses. This is a formalized notion of how to progressively deliver disciplinary knowledge to the masses. It seems an ineffective approach for relatively independent learners (or those who are willing to become same). In our weblogged learning situation the learner (weblogger) is in a position to use formal exposition as s/he likes and as necessary; Googleit searches can be helpful there. But the learner/weblogger also gets pertinent and blog-centered response which allows her/him to move naturally from one proposition, say, to a more comprehensive and sophisticated one.
To say the least it's a different experience. To say more: my quess is that it's a more powerful support for the inquiring learner.
The analysis, the scenario, above focuses only on the evolution of one weblogger. There's the community effect, too.
The community of participants is bootstrapping itself . Where all who participate in the exercise, and others on related topics ( sometimes as a learner, sometimes as critic, some times as support) profit because the interchange is to large and mutual benefit.
