According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow, the process through which we are going while trying to achieve our goals is more enriching than the success of attaining them at the end. This can be explained by the sense of enjoyment one derives from overcoming obstacles on the way, often through trial and error, momentarily groping in the dark in order to be enlightened in the most unexpected moment, forming hypotheses, scrutinising them to either refine them or refute them. It is these little successes (and likewise failures) that provide a sense of fulfillment, progress and flow.
I am now embarking on a new journey and although the final destination seems to be clear – completion of the introductory module of the post-grad course in e-learning, the adventures on the way seem equally, if not even more, enticing. As a true traveller, I cannot NOT keep a log of events – let it be ICTraveBlogue (50% after all).
LOOKING BACK & AHEAD
In order to explain how the idea of the flow applies to blogging, let me go to the roots. I’ve had a go at blogging before. While doing an online course in autumn 2008 (ICT in the Classroom), one of the tasks was to set up a blog. Mine was very impressionistic and featured a handful of stories from distant places, embellished with pictures and music. It’s still floating somewhere in the blogosphere but I’ve given up on it as I didn’t have a clear idea of what to fill it up with.
At the same time, I discovered a few blogs kept by language educators, some of them exemplary, some of them not. I also tried blogging with my learners but again due to insufficient planning, the blogs soon fell into oblivion. There’s been and still is a desire in me to blog but seeing how many people reach for this tool to share their personal or professional musings, I feel overwhelmed and somewhat reluctant to throw in my two pennyworth. Sometimes, I feel like there are too many words already produced and the blogosphere becomes a massive dump of verbal waste, creating a sort of e-pollution. Cautious and maybe overprotective of my digital identity and image, I’m slightly sceptical about blogging.
Blogging means getting enmeshed in the Web, Web 2.0 to be exact. By establishing your online presence in the blogosphere and contact with your audience you build social relationships. As in real life you look after your reputation, maintaining your online self requires careful planning and management. This is your online footprint, coded in pixels and bytes, easily replicated and reproduced elsewhere by means of pings, tweets, mentions, linkbacks. Therefore, to prevent the blog from becoming a double-edged sword, some quality-assurance formula is essential. This means determination, an awareness of the audience, sharing interesting, thought-provoking ideas and posing good questions for the audience to ponder and finally being willing to involve in the dialogue. I am an educator in the first place, a technologist in the second so pedagogy will always come first and thus the basic questions to ask yourself before venturing into the blogosphere are 'why am I doing this and what do I want to achieve?' and 'how do I want my audience to benefit from it?', questions I keep asking myself before each face-to-face or online class.
Ideally the ideas shared with the reader should be new but these are sometimes hard to come by and perhaps require a spark of genius ;-) I much rather prefer the other route of the so-called ‘creative recombination’ which might involve the following steps (aptly described in the course on Personal Learning Environments):
· Aggregate
· Remix
· Repurpose
· Feed further
In case of this blog, the aggregation has been partly managed by my course tutors – it’s the module list of core and secondary texts. It’s also the input from fellow students in form of the discussion forums. Lastly it’s the blogs and sites on e-learning I have been following for a while, Steve Wheeler’s or George Siemens’ to name a coupls. Combined with my personal experience of being an online student and tutor, this should provide enough food for thought for this blog. By engaging with concepts pertinent to e-learning, I am hoping to increase my expertise in the field. But an additional goal is to harness the idea of blogging, dispel any sceptisism about its feasibility and instill a healthy habit of reflecting on the web reality/e-learning. This is the journey or the process I am going to take part in and hope to derive a sense of flow. This should be easier as the blog at the moment is to grow in a closed environment, a little greenhouse visited only by my tutors – less worry about my digital footprint. Another ‘bonus’ is the fact it’s subject to assessment – otherwise my procrastinating self could easily forget about the required frequency and quality of postings.
In order to do so I need a plan too. I thought I could start with setting up some basic rules by filling in this simple but imaginative worksheet from Blog of Proximal Development:
Keywords: blogging, general musings, IDEL11
Comments
Kudos on getting the blog going again. I’ve really enjoyed seeing how this post developed from its original.
I do worry you are putting too many expectations on what your blog should be. It is meant to chart a journey after all, and the journey doesn’t start with exemplary posts, perfectly set out
It is meant to be a conversation, to allow for vague or draft thoughts that get developed and refined as the conversation progresses. So, I’d encourage you to embrace the safety of the greenhouse and be ok with posting a few fragile seeds alongside posts like this beautifully flowering orchid. :)
Some general comments about the blog
Below are some quick comments I’ve shared with each student as they have started up their blog… Some of them might seem a tad unnecessary for you, but best to pop them all in anyway! :) ….
The purpose of the blog is be an open, reflective, dialogue between the two of us – somewhere you can develop ideas, not somewhere where ideas are delivered fully formed, evidence and argued. The metaphor I find myself working with is a cross between a diary and a chat I might have with a lecturer before or after a small group seminar.
You might want to consider scheduling time to make your blog entries. Three or four entries a week is ideal. It might be a good idea to include time to blog with your time for doing the course reading. Then again a great ‘blog thought’ might hit you at any time – so find a way to keep track of those ideas for when you later have time to reflect on them. Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with making a two line blog post, and following it up later.
I’d also encourage you to be adventurous with your use of the medium. You might find visuals, video etc that can help you express your ideas – even though this is an assessment activity, it’s a chance to have fun and explore developing your own blog voice.
I’ll check in on the blogs once or twice each week. So you should be hearing from me fairly regularly, but it might be a couple of days between your post and my response. (I work part-time – so I’m usually online and checking through my courses on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays).
I’ll respond to your post in the comments section (like I’m doing now). My intention in commenting on your posts is to be supportive, clarifying and challenging. You don’t have to respond to all of my comments. It’s up to you which bits you want to then respond to further – and whether you want to continue the conversation in the comments section or branch into another blog post.
I might not comment on every blog post – as you might make some posts to track you own ideas rather than needing my input. It’s also sometimes a bit hard to keep track of comments and posts – something might slip through the net or it might have been set to ‘private’. If you feel I’ve not responded to something in time just email me that you think something’s amiss.
You can set your blog up to send you an email notification when a comment has been made. Just go to ‘Account settings’ on the top right hand of the page, pop in your email address, select the ‘receive notifications’ button and ‘save’ at the very bottom of the page.
Around the end of week 5 we can have a mid-blog review, looking at the blog brief, the assessment criteria, what you have done so far and what you could do further when thinking about the assessment angle of the blog. I’m eager to improve my practice too – so at that stage I’ll be asking you for feedback too!
Oh – and just a reminder, as per p.11 of the course handbook – do make sure you include the four blog tutors for the course in your access group (that’s me, Sian, Rory and Hamish) and remember to add the keyword IDEL11 to your post. The other tutors won’t be stopping by your blog, but they need access come the end of semester for moderation purposes.
I think that’s it for now. Kudos again on getting the blog set up and do let me know if you are having any problems or need something further from me.
All the best
Clara
Morning Clara
Many thanks for the comment - I don't think you should worry about me setting high standards (although I do tend to be a perfectionist). I think the posts produced on the basis of the previous ones might be a little polished just because I had more time to think about them plus your previous feedback. I want to include the previous posts but at the same time I would like to add, perhaps shorter entries on other topics. Much as I love e-learning I have quite a few reservations, e.g. I'm setting up a class site for my students right now (using Grou.ps - since Ning went commercial) and already experiencing problems. The pages often don't load or display in a faulty way - will that discourage my students. Will they be able to navigate through the site, finding the tasks, selecting what is most important. They might have been using technology for a greater percentage of their lives but does it mean they feel comfortable using it for studying and in a foreign language? Am I wasting time (time where I should be studying myself really) setting up something that won't be used? Tere are barriers to using technology, psychological, emotional, social, technical ... The time it takes to familiarise oneself with SL, for instance, doesn't justify using it on odd occasions, in my view. I am digressing but what I want to say is that along with some stronger and fuller-grown specimens there will be fragile seeds as well, many fragile seeds indeed ...
Much head nodding from me on the technological difficulties front. It always reminds me of Gilly Salmon’s 5 stage model – without easy, reliable access, how can e-learning be expected to occur?
Looking forward to the rest of the greenhouse! :)
C.