Jun 28 2008
Beachcombing or stuff I learned this week (intention statement)
Am making an intention statement (Procrastination tip no. 4) that I will start a weekly themed post about stuff I learned that week. For two reasons really.
Connected learning
First, I want to make visible how much I’m learning from being connected. The last 24 hours is a prime example. Twitter’s replies function is still down, so last night I went on Plurk and in a few hours playing with the other eduTwitter immigrants, we learned its technicalities but also began thinking about its limitations, variations in microblogging and how interface differences changed our interactions. This morning I’ve spent one hour creating, editing and embedding our institution’s Wikipedia page and had to learn to create pages, create categories, learn a different wiki syntax. I can’t get over how many skills and insights you pick up and how fast, when you’re a connected learner.
Inspiration
My second reason is the blogging blues which hit me earlier this year. For me it’s easier to blog about the simple things like my Moodle Wishlists. Listing what I’ve learned in a week will be straightforward, easy and motivating. Hopefully it’ll give me the inspiration to tackle the other edu-balls-of-yarn in my head.
My blog is built around the metaphor of the kiwi bach which sits between the stable land and the changing sea. Educational technologists (technology intgrators, e-learning advisors, whatever the term) seem to fulfill much the same role, sitting on the boundary between the stable field of education and the tempestuous technology. So in that vein, I guess this is the start of my beachcombing.
First beachcombings already in draft.
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I can relate to some many statements about blogging. My biggest troubles are too many ideas and too much passion.
Once I pick a topic, I end up with a book (sort of)….so I leave them in draft form. It make take weeks or months before I can go back to them.
I could follow your system for blogging ideas. What did I learn this week? Reviewing new ideas or applications would be simpler, for me, because there is not as much emotional ownership or in depth research knowledge in my mind.
Right now, I am pursuing another method. I am focusing on beginning of the year ideas, instructional strategies, and activities. The use of picture books, new projects and various ideas for ways to make instructional strategies more interactive through technology represent meaningful information, and they are pretty well accepted by everyone.
Once I run this horse in the ground, I think I will pick up your idea. By they way, I hope you don’t mind that I am putting your blog on my blogroll.
Hi Joyce, nice to see you are doing so well at the other side of the globe. What a busy bee you still are! Twitting, blogging, microblogging, moodle-ing…
With so much technology to stay in touch with I would feel like a Borg. But microblogging alone, well, okay, I will try nanoblogging (intention statement). Bringing me to your blog, which is very nice, but the weekly part of the beachcombing seems quit a challenge!
As an experienced beachcomber, on the sandy one that is, I like to advise you not to wait until you stumble upon something really interesting. Almost everything, even the most ordinary shell, tells an interesting story if you take a good detailed look. So maybe a kind of mini/mesoblogging about the ordinary things that wash up from the technocean would do the trick?
Doesn’t that sound like “grandfather tells a story” in denglish?
Well it is, actualy.
Hello Sheryl and Remy, thank you both for leaving a message.
Yes, the weekly part has been a struggle. I was suffering a bit from information overload and instead of taking a step back, my solution was to make more work for myself and try to keep track of it all. The words ’snowball’ and ‘hell’ spring to mind.
But thank you for your advice Remy – I should pick up and share even the smallest shells or learning, even if my description doesn’t do them full justice. In this job I have so many new experiences and insights each day and it’s a pity that I’m letting them slip away now. (And how good to hear from you – any plans for heading this way yet? It’s beautiful here in the wine region and we have some spectacular cliffs to satisfy even the geekiest geologist ; )).
Sheryl, I like your idea of focusing on a particular project too, drilling down rather than going broad. I’m working on building a community of practice around e-learning and that would lend itself really well to this.
Thanks for the encouragement.