I read a lot of different blogs – a whole lot of them in fact. I also comment on many of them. However I’ve found that in doing this it’s exceptionally difficult to remember what you said where, and to whom. Some times I’ll bookmark a specific post with the intent of returning later to follow up on the discussion, but this rarely happens in practice.
With this in mind I’ve just added the Subscribe to Comments plugin to this blog. Now when you visit the comment area of a specific post you will be given the opportunity to request a notification of any follow-up replies. This option appears at the very bottom of the post beneath the “Leave a Reply” area.
According to the plugin details:
“The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts, block all notifications, or even change their notification e-mail address!”
All in all it sounds pretty useful for anyone interested in staying informed on discussions that emerge in the wake of posts here. That said I haven’t had a chance to actually test this in practice yet, so the reality remains to be seen.
If you decide to take advantage of this feature and have any opinions on it – good, bad or indifferent – please take the time to post them in the comment area so I can get an idea of whether this is useful or not.
My intent is to make discussions here as easy as possible to participate in, and ultimately to empower the reader. In my view, the significance of reflection in blogging does not detract from the importance of interactivity and discussion – nor are the two mutually exclusive. Indeed I think they can inform one another and enhance the learning experience of all
Yeah. It’s a great idea to keep me up to date on how the blog can be utilized. However, consider these thoughts. Rather than a FAQ or article, we ought to seek an experience together. I am going to walk away from this post and wonder later where I left it. I am going to wonder “who had the post about subscribing, if I only knew that I could go to the blog and at least search for the post”. How about walking each other through all of this stuff and experiencing it together. It’s bound to stick.
I’m offering this suggestion because I still don’t know anything about time conversion after several people have linked me to the World Clock. I didn’t come to this course to get handed a pile of links and FAQ’s and one-pagers. I came here for an experience.
If I have an experience with you through your blog, I am more likely to remember who you are.
To conclude, as much info as possible should be communicated individually through discussion forms.
artie
P.S. Your blog is still on my blogroll so you must be keeping up with the course. Joy is doing well at keeping up with the course outline also, so you might drop her some comments.
Oops. I missed clicking the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”. I am double posting so I can get a notification.
Hi Artie,
Thanks for the thoughts first of all. You highlight some very important differences between use of discussion forums versus blogs – specifically with respect to being centralised versus distributed, and group-focused versus individual-focused.
Personally, I use blogs because I prefer blogs. I’ve tried keeping up with the discussions in the forums of both our FOC08 course and the Connectivism course I’m taking, however for one reason or another I’ve stopped visiting either. My reasons might be useful/relevant here actually:
In the case of FOC08, it was the volume of information coming through and the realization that I really didn’t like Google Groups. I found it too difficult to navigate and didn’t want my email inbox clogged up with notifications.
There was also the element of personal preference too. I rely on blogs first and foremost for their reflective opportunities, and wasn’t really getting that in the forums. Some people do, certainly, but personally I’m not one of them.
In the case of CCK08, it was the griefers and trolls dominating the discussion. Of course the ones causing the trouble don’t and won’t admit they’re doing anything wrong – but unfortunately it’s caused a lot of people to go elsewhere to places like NING, or blog networks.
Alas I’m late for work and have to duck out – I’ll try to come back to this topic later as I think it’s important to cover. You’ve also inspired me to go back and write my post on discussion forums too
.
Cheers,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Personally, I too like a blog as my base for networking.
When I speak of “discussion”, I am using the word in a classic sense, meaning “an organization of people and speech”. We can have that without a message board. We can discuss this topic here on your blog. Or we can discuss using gmail chat or gmail groupchat.
My overall approach to community is to reduce information overload by reducing people overload. There are few discussions that require more than 10 or 15 people. The President’s Cabinet is something like ten people. The Iraq Study Group was ten people. The Supreme Court is nine!
A discussion should never be more than what can be listened to attentively. In my book, 20 people and you’re over the top. A small group that is faithfully attentive to developing very basic skills can do much more than a much larger group. I think ten people can accomplish more than one hundred. But what if we had ten groups of ten people who were working toward the same purpose?
What if all of the information was presented through the experience of discussion? So rather than write an article on “Finding a Buddy” we had the new members along with established members impart information through a discussion form that culminated with being and having a buddy. The outcome of the discussion could then be evaluated according to objective criteria.
artie