At the risk of subjecting you to a raw brain dump, I need to get the following train of thought down on virtual paper as it’s relevant for my current wider train of thought on network literacies.
A post today at Possibilities Abound (“Learning as Conversation“) has reminded me of the importance of discussion and commenting during the learning process. I’ve written about this in the past, but given my current train of thought, along with the wider discussions on network literacies, I think the discussion is important to keep in the front of my mind.
Lani writes of a professional development workshop she recently attended and at which she presented a session on “Extended Learning and Dialogue in the Blogosphere”. Lani writes:
“The small group with whom I interacted examined professional conversations, the shift to transparency that occurs in dialogue on blogs, strategies for deepening learning and conversations with students using the comment feature, and along the way engaged in a few conversations with their own comments.”
Discussion is an absolutely critical element to learning, whether online, offline, or a combination thereof. As Siemens and Downes discussed at length during Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (session 2, 2008), we have a need to externalise and socialise around knowledge. Effectively, we need to speak about concepts and ideas with others in order to gain a deeper, more meaninful appreciation of their implications and interrelatedness with other concepts.
Discussion on blogs therefore is nothing new, but it is a critical element that needs to be fostered. Frequently the reflective, individual aspects of blogging are emphasised – and rightfully so – but this should not come at the expense of the discussions that take place in the wake of posts. Where posts can facilitate reflection, commenting facilitates discussion, debate and in turn can lead to re-examination and re-consideration of concepts.
As I commented on Lani’s blog:
“Like you I think the significance of conversation and discussion on blogs cannot be overstated. I think it’s one of the core elements in how we learn during the process.
The reflective elements that drive the initial posts are important too – don’t get me wrong – but the comments and discussion that follows is how we engage with others and start to “socialise around knowledge” as George Siemens might say.
So I think devoting sufficient attention to the cultivation of a culture that embraces and recognises the significance of deep commenting is criticial to foster when working with blogs as it helps close the circle of reflection, discussion, synthesis, and reflection once again
”
As I see it, the cultivation of a culture of considered blog commenting and discussion requires a fundamental shift in the way we view the web, and our place within it. Traditionally sites pushed out content, and the role of most readers was one of purely consumption. Bucking this role and seeing sites as a forum for participation, where our thoughts are valid and deserve an audience is a fundamental shift – but one that nonetheless needs to occur before people will feel comfortable or indeed compelled to join the discussion.
Late for work, more on this later…
A couple of things struck me here.
One was Lani’s slide saying “when commenting becomes second nature”. I’m thinking of my own history with blogging, which often seems like a one-sided speech punctuated by comments, instead of a conversation. Perhaps the format of blogging is limiting, and efforts to create true conversation require a new kind of creativity.
Another was thinking about Facebook and MySpace and SecondLife, places where it isn’t even “commenting”, but rather an inherent expectation of conversation. As more people get used to these tools, perhaps “commenting” and ongoing conversations will become the norm.
Re: commenting and discussion {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/wXcKj6luq7_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”Re: commenting and discussion ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/qbwvHJttId”}}}
Might there be an oppositional dynamic in wanting depth but also conversation?
Certainly most blog comments are superficial. Yet the nature of conversation is not the exchange of fully-blown arguments, but rather the establishment of trust, then the asking of questions. Kind of like a teacher and a student (the new model, not the old).
If that paradigm holds (and it may not), then you want the “team” to be exploring ideas, coming to depth rather than having it up front, at the beginning of the conversation.
Most people in Facebook and other social media don’t have extended conversations like this, but some do. And I certainly find it difficult to sustain a deep conversation in the blogging medium. For example, you’ve already followed this post up with another, so now I’m “behind”!
Lisa
Very good points
Networks and relationships do take time to develop really, so perhaps expecting long in-depth discussions is not only unrealistic sometimes but in some cases irrelevant.
For that matter the notion of online communication needs to take distributed conversations into account as well. Quite frequently I’ll start posting a comment on a blog, but find that it quickly takes on a life of it’s own and becomes its own blog post.
In this case my contribution to the original discussion takes the form of a trackback and you start to see conversational webs developing rather than simply a long stream of comments at the footer of the original post.
Your point about “coming to depth” is a great analogy too by the way. The exploration of network literacies that I’m engaging with my colleagues in is a perfect example. We’re completely in the thick of the discussion and from my perspective no clear outcomes have emerged yet. So the conversation is actually spread across a collection of blog posts, Tweets, comments, and emails – some of which are short sweet and to the point, others are longer and more considered. But all of them are driving along the conversation in their own way.
Great food for thought really
Thanks!
Cheers,
Mike
Grrr. I had a huge comment and it failed to post. Could have been too long, I guess. Or a network error (hotel internet – I’m at a convention in NYC). Or just too much commenty goodness for the site to handle all in one go. So here’s a briefer recap – just imagine it with added awesome and you’ll get some sense of the original glory.
1. I love this thread so much (insert lolcat here)
2. We should connect this conversation to the one on the Bava here: http://bavatuesdays.com/where-ar-the-white-women-at/
3. Two key questions, given the apparent difficulties of the distributed conversation medium for some. How important is it that conversations happen this way/in these media? How can we foster these skills and habits in our students and colleagues – the discussion Mike is having with his colleagues there? [Links here to http://the-ed-rush.blogspot.com/2009/02/media-and-identity-in-middle-east-north.html and two events I am offering for colleagues at the end of the month]
4. A plea for Lisa to share her experience and wisdom, as so often.
5. A reiteration of how much I love the discussion, sans lolcat.
Hi Ed,
Sorry about the comment gobbler – I looked at the comments that have been flagged as spam in the hopes that it may have shown up there, but to no avail I’m afraid.
Secondly I’ll be sure to take a look at the post at Bavatuesday’s that you mentioned. I saw it when it came through originally, but had no idea it’s grown into such a vibrant discussion.
Now quickly regarding point 3 (running late for work so may have to pick this up again later). It seems to me that distributed conversations aren’t so much a matter of good or bad, but rather a natural outcome of a highly personalised, fluid system.
The primary issue as I see it – especially in the context of education – is how to make sense of all the contributions in a way that is the easiest to track. After all, classrooms are in some ways diametrically opposed to the landscape we find in new media.
Realistically instructors are ultimately responsible for facilitating the learning experiences of the students in the course, which is what makes centralised sites and discussion forums so appealing. They serve to lighten the administrative load.
A system of distributed sites – especially ones that can be easily started by students – immediately negates centralisation. And even in the case of mandates to the contrary, discussions are likely to occur in disparate spaces.
It seems to me that the first and primary way to build structures up around this is via RSS and tagging. If instructors establish a tagging convention for the course, and even specific weeks or topics, the tags themselves can act as aggregation points for all of the discussions that reference them – regardless of their location.
The connectivism course for example imported the Technorati feed for everything tagged as ‘CCK08′ – this meant students didn’t even need to know where a site was to discover the conversations taking place there – they just had to check the feed on the main portal.
In fact using sites like Netvibes or Pageflakes, you could take this further ad infinitium – even creating a portal of all student blogs, where the feeds were all added to a single page, which then acted as a gateway to the wider content.
The importance here, I think, is rather than enforcing a specific location for conversation, we’d be encouraging the adoption of a specific convention for tagging and filtering which could be implemented anywhere that supported RSS and ultimately benefitted everyone.
The key is in increasing awareness of what RSS is and how you can fully harness it to syndicate content.
Probably more I could add here, but gotta run.
Talk later!
Mike
Yup – syndication and tagging. Those are definitely the way to make all this work for education, and they are much harder than one might expect to get right. Looking forward to the continuing conversation.
(P.S. I think the commenting glitch may be an OpenID issue – it doesn’t like my websites…)
“they are much harder than one might expect to get right”
That’s for sure. Exhibit A is the fact that I …ahem…haven’t been using the tags that my colleagues and I agreed upon to start aggregating related content.
Bad Mike, very bad!
For reference I’m going to paste in a comment I just left at Jenny Connected on a post titled “What makes a post valuable” as I think it’s relevant to the discussion taking place here as well: