What's the Blogging Point?: Can personal webpublishing have a qualitative impact on learning Seb logs some good thoughts from Will and Ken (BTW Will, cool new look and goodonya for the scripting kudos :o) on the question of whether students are really blogging, why or why not and what it is that actually helps blogging succeed in an educational setting.
More to the point though he asks:
"So what are the things we do with personal Webpublishing that go beyond what we have done in formal educational settings before? What are the qualitative differences for your personal learning since you have started to spend some time putting your stuff out there?"
because if we don't ask these questions...
"we will see thousands of teachers and instructors applying Weblogs and Wikis and who knows what to "make" others do the same stuff they have made them do before." [Seblogging News]
Which is, IMO, the big issue and something I wrote about in part for Xplana. My answer to Seb is, unfortunately, not as in formed by practice as I would like it to be :o( but I think, coming out of a fair bit of experience and thought.
Basically, personal webpublishing to me is a new 'dynamic' and I think it appeal lies in the importance (as Earl W Stevick put it) 'what goes on inside and between' people (although, admittedly, he did say 'the people in the room' ;o) but the thought's still there). With personal webpublishing (although I'm swaying towards just calling it 'blogging'... language tends to have a life of its own!) each learner can have a voice like they have not had before and connect / link up with / listen to people in a way in which has also not been possible. They can subvert at will! However, as Seb says, if we're just reproducing tired ol' pedagogies then there 'aint going to be much happening, for example:
In a traditional formal learning context if someone / a group completes a piece of work they do so, most of the time, knowing that they are completing that work for the 'judgment' of their teacher. Put simply, they are creating that work for assessment... that's the purpose, that's the driver, the motivation and the most important thing about it, really. Now... for me the key problem with that (besides it not being 'learning driven') is that aside from the positive assertion (which has always been pretty rare... for me ;o) that the teacher can provide there's nothing really going on inside me... and in terms of the between, hell, if I respect them I want to do good work for them but that's about it.
You see, I would like for my work to have a 'purpose' of sorts, I would like for my 'expression' to have an audience, I would like to be contributing to something larger, for my efforts to have a purpose (think 'getting stuck on the wall', 'being read by somebody else', 'helping someone else figure out what to do' etc.) In short, I would like my work to have a point.
Now, in this traditional educational context (teacher & assessment driven) it 'aint going to happen. Weblogs or no weblogs. But... in a setting where expression, collaboration, peer support, successful class dynamics, risk taking, sharing and all these recognised characteristics of effective learning are fostered, then personal publishing allows for a revolutionary form of expression and exploration between learners in the same class and the rest of the world.
It will provide a qualitative difference for the same reasons as it provides me with a qualitative difference in my 'informal' learning (I could go off on one now about how successful learning is informal, ad hoc, learner driven... but I won't) by giving me a personal voice and allowing me to personally connect with so many other voices. BUT I can do this because this is what I want to do. I want to communicate, express myself, listen and be listened to and... luckily... I'm in a work culture where that's cool (not that I was before!) IF I was working somewhere where this was taboo or if I was studying in a 'traditionally' taught course then there wouldn't be much point.
Perhaps the secret is to drop the 'formal' from learning (a la Lilia)... and incorporate a little bit more of that subversion ;o)
10:46:41 AM 
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