Blogging - the selective transforming of reality?
08-April-2004
Blogging is generally said to be like keeping a diary. I think this is wrong (although of course some people do use their blogs like that). For me there is little point in recording that I spent Wednesday evening in the Horner Ecke pub with Lars and we spent two (animated) hours trying to spend Werder Bremen's Champion's league booty and considering the possibility of Basturk moving from Leverkusen, or that on Friday I was in the same pub with Philip and Imke, where we talked of many interesting things including Imke's wedding dress and whether i shopuld move to a new flat. Such things are interesting to me but I can see little point in recording them (although I will write more accolades to the brilliant Werder Bremen in the next few days).
Instead I see of this blog as a notebook - somewhere I can record things of interest to me (and perhaps others) as they occur. Of course, I could write them in a notebook. But, firstly i cannot usually read my handwriting, second I will lose or forget the notebook, thirdly it is very useful (if only fort future cutting and sticking) to have these notes in electronic form, fourthly it is very handy to be able to refer others to my notes on occasion, and, finally I like the writing format of mixing the insubstantial, passing and ephemeral with things I think may be of some longer term interest ( if only to me).
More ideas on ICT for learning
08-April-2004
Another post, neatly bringing together a number of my latest obsessions.
First the use of blogs as a notebook. Second, the idea of production as pedagogy. Third, informal individual and collective learning. And fourth, what used to be known as 'empowerment', now tends to be called 'active citizenship' and what I call 'politics'.
The first I have already written about. I increasingly like using this blog as a notebook for ideas. I often used to scribble them on the back on an envelope, in the pub at then end of the day, or on bits of paper which I subsequently lost or forgot what I meant. Writing them like this makes sure I keep a record - more usefully it allows me to send a quick note to others I think might also like to pick up on an idea.
So what is the idea? First the history. yesterday, I was downloading my emails. Amongst them was the weekly newsletter from the excellent LabourStart . LabourStart, run by Eric Lee from London, provides on-line information about international labour movement and trade union campaigns. It is a fine example of how the use of new technology can be used as an organising and campaigning force.
Using blogs for collaboration
08-April-2004
I am getting concerned at how to keep the different project sites I have
responsibility up to date. For some time I have wanted to use web sites
as the centre of collaborative project management and development.
However this does raise a number of questions.
The first is the need for a good distributed content management system. Since Knownet went Open Source and started using Plone as the basis of our sites, we have made a huge step in that direction. True, the workflow is still too difficult for many, and it still requires a degree of expertise beyond amy of our project partners to confidently add new items to the site, but we are getting there. The next big step will be an easy to use workflow manager providing an interface for users to place or move content to where they want it.
Another problem is keeping the sites up to date. At the moment I contribute to some 12 or 15 web sites (not all provided by Knownet, I hasten to add). Getting into the flow of each to write new ideas - or just post news - is increasingly difficult.
The answer - I think - is to use my blog as a management tool. In other words, I will write the entries for different sites in the blog and copy them into the right place. At first this will have to be done by sticking and pasting, but Mike, the systems architect at Knownet, is optimistic that we can provide a user interface to do this task. This requires more work on customising Plone - and more development (or a replacement for)of Core Blog - the Zope based blogging tool we use at them moment.
I am ever more interested in the idea of collective blogging - either by just sharing a blog site - or by using a series of interlinked blogs - all contributing to a 'central' web site.
In the next few days I will be writing a number of project news items in this blog.
