Mathemagenic

Denham Grey continues the discussion on motivation to blog

May be another way to see the blog vs. web conference distinction. I find 'blogging for feedback' to be a quaint paradox. If you wish to have deep reflection and strong feedback, would you not gladly accept the containment of a conference / conversation? Do you not need a space where there is an established turn-taking rhythm?, a place where you have an identity, a history of reciprocity, a context and knowledge of the audience?

Blogging seems closer to broadcasting: 'hello world' , here are my thoughts, reply if you must otherwise move along, I get my biggest rewards from just organizing my thinking!

Somehow this approach seems to bypass the magic of dialog, the power of engagement, the synergy of connecting and reflecting. There is greater value I believe in 'thinking' together, than in publishing alone.

Probably I can't explain it yet, but for me "the magic of dialog, the power of engagement, the synergy of connecting and reflecting" of blogging is stronger than the same feelings of on-line conferences I visit (face-to-face conversations are out of scope). I guess my main problem with those conferences is that there I don't have established "identity, a history of reciprocity, a context and knowledge of the audience" and joining in on the way costs too much.

I feel that somehow blogs provide better context for deep reflective discussions. I find it difficult to explain, but probably Spike Hall explains it better.  Somehow he extracts things that I can hardly make explicit :)

There's lots more to think about here. For example, the idea of context that Lilia has named is deeper than the social, interpersonal context I referred to above. The kind of contextual analysis she describes could allow the really good respondent to find the intended idea even when only partially expressed in the message itself. Hmmmm!!!

My guess would be to look at blogs as digital apprenticeship tools: somehow regular reading of someone's blog gives you (at least me!) better context than participating in on-line discussion.

I know that you have the blog, but this is not a true blog: you don't have RSS feed, so other bloggers can't read you regularly and engage in a conversation, so you see mainly the "publishing" side of it. I also guess that most likely you don't use news aggregator, so you miss the experience of day-to-day following of someone's thoughts.

I would say that regular reading (you invite others with RSS and you read them with news aggregator) is essential for understanding the conversational power of blogging.

You could give it a try, starting simple Blogger (or better Radio) blog on "Critical look on blogs as conversation environment" (I would love to see your other thoughts too!). Your ideas are worth reading by more bloggers, but I'm afraid the only way to engage them in a conversation is to start blogging :)))

E-mail brings an invitation from Kevin Kruse to join e-Learning Guru. I didn't have much time to browse the site, but there are a couple of topic that I'd like to check later:

• resources on marketing e-learning (scroll) - I would add the report on e-learning motivation study (pdf)
• an overview on the ARCS model of learner motivation (I somehow missed it in my "training design" education :)