A Bloggers Doubt Regarding Their Value

I've written before (Is blogging self-serving? & Turning others on to blogging) of my friend Kathy and of her starting up her own blog. Initially she was very excited and enthusiastic about writing about her upcoming journey (by herself) to India to do some volunteer work. She set up a beautiful looking blog and began by chronicling her reason for embarking on the journey. With this I finally understood as well. Her family and friends have had great concern over her going to a country that is so different from our own especially during the hot summer months.

We discussed how putting a blog out would not only allow her friends to see where she is and how she is, but also to enlighten others to everything she is going through just in trying to get there. I can't begin to tell you how many shots she has had to take to prevent illness before travelling.

We also discussed that at the end of the journey it would become a wonderful archive of the entire experience which we all know will be life altering. Perhaps she will only help a few to understand her calling, perhaps she will help someone else who is thinking of volunteering too, and perhaps she will be able to write a book at the end. There are so many great things to come from blogging this part of her life.

Now the problem...someone made a comment suggesting that posting a blog was self-serving and self-promoting. The more I do this and the more I read from others, the greater I am completely convinced of the opposite. This tool of blogging is serving a purpose to me of purely learning. I go out and read other's blogs and write my thought about what I read, try to build on them or sometimes just write it into my own words so that I may review it at a later date. Another large purpose I hear over and over is the wonderful networking that comes from reading and commenting on others postings. Many are becoming great friends and colleagues through their blogs.

Now the reason I bring this up again is because it is my little electronic campaign to try and get Kathy to continue with her blog. Continue with the experiment. Continue with the written journey as well as the physical one.

I found a great quote today from Tom Haskin's post Content for our consideration. He too explains wonderfully many of the benefits to posting on blogs. Within his post he says...

"What we are reading in blogs is miscellaneous, as David Weinberger uses the term. We know it's a point of view that considers us all having varied viewpoints. We are not purporting to announce "one right answer", "my way or the highway" or "my expertise overrules all your clueless contradictions".

By being considerate of this context for our content, what we say in our blogs enters into our collective wisdom. It's filed under miscellaneous and accessed by each person's reasons to consider it. We enrich each other's understanding by putting it out there. Instead of each of us getting it right from books, we are collectively getting it appreciated from outlooks."

Tom concludes wonderfully with:

"This change to offering considerate content is deep. We are changing the premises for educating, employing and entertaining us. We are developing contexts for mutual benefit instead of delivering inconsiderate content."

It's incredibly exciting to look at blogging as not only as a tool for one's self, but more so that we can each become teachers, mentors, philosophers and entertainers on a global scale.

Help me to keep Kathy writing, feel free to send me a message to pass to her.

Microsoft Surface

Dear Santa: I've been very good this year (so far). For christmas could you please bring me a Microsoft Surface. I think I may need one really badly. If not could you at least send me to a conference or hotel lobby where I could play with one.

Thank you,
Tracy

ps. say hi to the reindeer

Another Plain English Video, Just in Time

"Wiki in Plain English" Yeah!!!
Just in time for a presentation I'm making this Friday to an OD Network about all these tools we already know about, Lee Lefever does it again. Just released is a simple and straight forward explanation of a wiki. His unique presentations are broadcasts over the web but use a format similar to early episodes of Southpark. No fancy animation here (fancy $million animation bad, Boo), that would clutter everything up and take away from the "make it simple for everyone" approach. Lee uses paper cutouts and moves them around as you watch to explain wikis and rss.

Keep up the great work and keep the videos coming. They are fabulous.

The Power and Expanse of Internet Video

I remember seeing this RSS in Plain English Video in a posting a while ago and thinking how great. I definitely need to share this with my colleagues who just don't quite get why I'm reading so much on the Internet lately.

Now the reason I can't remember which posting it was on has become quite evident as Lee Lefever explained yesterday on his blog The Common Craft Show.

The video was posted on April 23rd, 2007. Today is May 28th and in just over a month the video has been...

Viewed over 80,000 times across three hosts (Blip.tv, YouTube and DotSub)
Translated into 9 languages (subtitles)
Commented on 160 times (across sites)
Dugg 975 times
Added to Del.icio.us 795 times
Linked-to over 680 times (says Technorati)

Of course, all this has been quite good for the Common Craft web site. In the same month, the site has...

Gained over 400 new RSS subscribers
Reached Technorati Authority of 980, Rank of 2146
The blog entry containing the video has been viewed 46,000+ times and has over 100 comments
Gained more visitors by maybe 20%

And this all culminates in one big objective for us: Let's try to do THAT again!

Way to go. That is impressive. It's amazing how one little video that really hits home for people can explode into something so big and wonderful. Congratulations Lee and keep up the great work.

Another person that this happened to was inspirational/motivational speaker Judson Laipply with his Evolution of Dance. If you haven't seen it yet I'd be really amazed. I don't remember the stats exactly how it took off within a week, but since being posted on YouTube in April 2006 it has been viewed over 49 Million times. The story is something along the lines that within a week of being posted hundreds of thousands had viewed it and Jud was being scheduled to appear all over the world on talk shows. Wow, one week.

Makes me wish I had some great video to post on the net too.
Oh wait there is my improv troop. One day we'll be famous. We'll be stars.

My Wiki as of Today

Well so far about 12 of 50 invited people have signed up for my first wiki, however no one has added and new information to the site. I set up lots of templates, suggestion pages, and ideas of where to begin, but nothing.

I can't actually add any content myself as I am unfamiliar with the subject. I just made the site look pretty.

I've decided to ask the staff liasons for these new hires if they understood the purpose of the wiki or how to edit/access it. Perhaps I need to do a face-to-face small presentation on the site. I was hoping I had presented enough detail on the opening page of what was expected.

I shall continue with updates on what happens next, however any ideas are welcome.

My first wiki is created

One of the ideas I had after going to the eLearning Guild conference this year was to create a wiki. This wiki would be for new nursing staff hires at our hospital and would be a common place where they could comment on what it's like to be a new nurse. They could write about their first day, what it is like to work on a particular unit, and tips for studying (as many are grad students).

Well the good news is I successfully created my first wiki yesterday using PBwiki (thanks for the suggestion to use it for wikis Brent). Interesting though I started with wikispaces instead. I needed a wiki that was really easy to use as I am unsure of the familiarity of the users I am inviting to post to the wiki. Both were quite easy to utilize and format into my desired look. Also, I wanted a space where I could open it only to certain people to edit and both offered this.

So why the change from the wikispaces to PBwiki. Well the reasons were the same ones that came up over and over at the conference...

• what if someone posts something negative
• can people outside the organization see what is posted

I had to explain that the general thinking with wikis is that you trust that the providers of content that truly wish to grow and develop the wiki will police themselves and others within the group. If something derogatory is posted, someone else will surely edit it and remove the negative comments. At the conference an interesting video was shared showing the progression of a wiki from conception to a very robust document. The video was created by Jon Udell titled "Heavy metal umlaut: the movie". One very interesting point in the movie shows a period of time where vandalism takes place and there are some nasty postings that a placed on the wiki, then taken off, posted on again - but larger, taken off, on, off, on and finally off. In real time, when this occurred, it took place over the course of 4 minutes. The question then was..."is this the same author posting, editing, reposting. The answer was no. Within that time frame 4 or 5 different individuals removed the offending comments to keep the wiki information true and factual.

Straight from THE wiki (Wikipedia):

"Open-source wikis (such as Wikipedia) have been criticized for their reliability: certain individuals may maliciously introduce false or misleading content.[4] Proponents rely on their community of users who can catch malicious content and correct it. Wikis in general make a basic assumption of the goodness of people.[4]"

Secondly, the concern was brought to me...we don't want anyone outside the hospital to see the wiki. There was the concern of privacy here and again if something was said such as "I had a hard time finding parking" and someone read this, it may discourage them from applying for a position here.

That all being said, Wikispaces allowed for members only posting, but was visible to everyone. This can however, be altered for a very small fee. PBwiki allowed for a private wiki that only members could view. I also found that the wiki once set up has far little or no advertising on it as the wikispaces did. I found that I could manipulate the look and feel of it quite a bit better as well. One option that it doesn't allow, except if you pay a small fee, was for 1 administrator. Every participant has the same access/edit rights to the site. But here again is where you have to trust in the "goodness" of the participants posting to the wiki.

I'm now extremely excited to see if/how the content will develop. I have already had several of the invited members login and sign up for the wiki. I'm just now waiting and watching for the contribution to begin.

Another suggestion that was brought up at the conference was to utilize the wiki, once the content appears to be at its maximum, to create an online course from the material.

Hopefully by next year's conference I will have a year's worth of postings to this blog, more then one wiki, and several new online courses.

Weird what I get excited about now a days.

Legal Liability when Posting to a Blog from Online Courses

I was a little taken back by an email sent to myself from my instructor regarding my recent posts for my online course submissions. I was told it was in appropriate of me to place on a public blog any discussion which may have occured within the classroom environment without written permission from the fellow students.

Wow, it still hurts after all these years when you think you do something so simple, unoffensive and perhaps beneficial to others to then be scolded for it.

I didn't mean any offensive to my peers within my class and do apologize if any was taken. I was impressed by their words and in so used them as reference for my assignment sumbissions. I believed I was flattering their comments and building upon their ideas.

I have since taken their names out of the postings, but have kept their comments as I believe they are important ideas.

>>>>>
It can be important in online environments to value the confidentiality and privacy of participants in this course. If you are placing the full names of participants in a public blog you could be legally liable for breaches of privacy and confidentiality. One way to address this in the future is perhaps by obtaining ethics clearance through the University and having the written permission of people that you cite. Added to this Lim (2004) states, "We saw in Chapter 3 the prevalence and importance of the role of e-commerce on the Internet. In order for consumers and businesses to engage in e-commerce, there must be a certain level of confidence in the privacy of their transactions." (p. 113). This statement has implications for e-commerce and e-learning.
Reference
Lim, Y.F. (2004). Cyberspace Law. Commentaries and Materials. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Best Practices in Online Learning

My final submission for the current portion of my course required a brief summary of one of the chapters of our course text book. We are utilizing Palloff & Pratt's (2003) "The Virtual Student".

I chose to go straight to the last chapter, "Becoming Truly Learner Focused - Best Practices in Online Learning," hoping to get some solid concrete examples of best practices. I'm not sure it truly does hold what I was hoping to get out of the chapter or the course, but it's a start. I would be curious to see what others think of how to be Truly Learner Focused. Does this mean stepping into and embracing elearning 2.0?

My submission:
To become facilitators and instructors in online learning environments we must become more familiar to the needs of our students and that is drastically changing moment by moment as technology constantly changes. We must understand our students at a much deeper level then perhaps ever before. Palloff & Pratt (2003, p.124) point out that as facilitators we need to more clearly understand who our students are, how they learn, and how we can best support them and promote involvement. Surely the more familiar we become with our students’ learning styles, preferences, needs, and aspirations then the more we can truly assist them in their educational endeavours and create learner-centred environments.

Palloff & Pratt look to Maryellen Weinmer’s (2002, p. xvi) work regarding several key changes that we need to address to foster these environments. The balance of power needs to change from the instructor “pushing” information to the students “pulling” the information that they need and require from a variety of resources. The facilitator becomes more of a “guide on the side” (Palloff & Pratt, 2003, p. 125) assisting the students in finding and evaluating the sites they visit and the content that they are reading and researching.

Secondly the function of content needs to be changed. This concept centres on the idea that the students need the opportunity to work collaboratively to formulate knowledge and meaning, rather than just providing facts and information that they have memorized or retained (Palloff & Pratt, 2003. pg. 126). Important to note here is the idea that students need to learn from one another and that this collaboration of ideas, concepts, discussions, and so forth will in essence become the true content of the course material.

The next key element is that the role of the teacher needs to change. The teacher/facilitator should no longer be the key content expert (Palloff & Pratt, 2003, p.126). Students do need/want an instructor who is knowledgeable, however to promote a learner-centred environment the main breadth of knowledge should emerge from the students expertise, experience and research. The eLearning Guild e-book “834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction” (2005, pg. 5) suggests that the facilitator should subscribe to newsletters (blogs, rss feeds, etc) that are geared toward online designers and developers; stay connected with other professionals in the field. Make sure to have some first-hand experience regarding online courses and more specifically the topic you are facilitating. Be prepared to receive and immediately respond to vast amounts of email from your students. As a “guide” to the course you will need to respond to these emails that will be seeking your input and feedback.

The fourth key element is that the responsibility for learning needs to change. Time and time again as students we are told that we will get out of a course all that which we put into it (Pallof & Pratt, 2003. pg. 127). Palloff & Pratt continue to say that “students will need to be encouraged and empowered to take charge of the formation of the learning community, to interact with on another and to receive feedback on how will this is occurring.” Simply stated students need to become comfortable learning from one another rather then purely from the teacher or a text book. This concept begins to lead us towards Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). These environments are web base systems that allow learners to mange their own learning. Wikipedia.com (May 16, 2007) describes these as a system that will provide support for the learner to set there own learning goals, manage their learning (both content and process), and communicate with others in the process of learning thereby achieving their learning goals. PLEs are still emerging and growing as the next phase and application of elearning.

Finally the last element to change is the purpose and processes of evaluation. If the course has very specific outcomes and objectives then it is appropriate to base the evaluation on determining if these have been mastered by the student. More accurately for a learner-centred course is the ability of the student at the end of the course work to be able to apply the knowledge that they have gained and demonstrate the ability to use newly developed skills as addressed in the course to new efforts.

As technology grows/develops daily and as new concepts or ideas emerge on elearning, such as PLE’s, the best practices on how to use these tools to provide your students with the optimum learning experience will continue to change as well. As mentioned above from eLearning Guild ebook, one of the best practices that we as facilitators can do is to stay in constant contact with our students to know what they need of us. But we also need to stay in constant contact with our peers, by newsletters, blogs, sites, and rss feeds in this manner stay abreast of new developments in an ever changing learning community so that we can best support our students.

References
History of personal learning environments. (2007, May 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:56, May 16, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_personal_learning_environments&oldid=131090813

Palloff, R.M. & Pratt, K. (2003). The Virtual Student. A Profile and Guide to Working with Online Learners. San Francisco: Jossey Bass

The eLearning Guild. (2005). 834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction. Santa Rosa, California: The eLearning Guild.

Weimer. M. Learner-Centred Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Recent posts

My last 3 posts, if it wasn't completely apparent already, were assignment submissions for my current online course. If you have any comments on them it would be greatly appreciated.

I do keep looking to the same blogs at the moment and referencing them quite frequently. I'm not trying to be biased and I'm sure they don't mind the traffic to their sites. I'm still trying to work my schedule and keep people from "bothering" me with the little things so that I can get more current on all the other great blogs that are out there.

Thanks everyone so far for the wonderful information that I've been able to learn through your sites.

Relating Valuable Experiences through Social Book Marking

Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective : eLearning Technology

A recent quoted added to a discussion thread in my online course mentioned “Van Manen (2003, p.53) says “When someone has related a valuable experience to me then I have indeed gained something, even though the [thing] gained is not an identifiable entity”. Educators and aspiring ones can be authorities who speak of their own experiences in e-learning and e-teaching.”

This thought tweaked in me the idea of social book marking. This concept allows a user to bookmark any site they find on the internet whether it is a website, recipe, etext, music, etc. and store it online. By storing it online you can have access to your bookmarks from any computer that has an internet connection. It also allows you to add tags to your saved book marks. Tags are short identifiable words that you assign to the book mark so that you can find it quickly later. An example of this is, if you stored a website on how to bake a lemon pie, you may uses tags such as recipe, lemon, pie. As you accumulate book marks you may begin to store more and more under one particular tag (i.e. recipe). Also when you book mark a site you can also see how many other users (of a particular social book marking site) have also book marked that site for its relevance. In this respect you are telling one another “Here is a site about xxxx that I found extremely interesting and informative and I think others should look at it as well.”

If several users collaborate and use the same tag identifier then they will all be able to share and resource the same pages. These booking marking sites also allow you to do searches on their home page regarding a particular topic. In this respect as one user finds a page/experience that they have found invaluable then this e-tool becomes an extremely valuable tool as a method for sharing those experiences with other learners and facilitators.

Notes: Extra information on this topic can be found through Tony Karrer’s blog eLearning Technology, and through the del.icio.us website.



References
http://del.icio.us/ Yahoo! Inc., Sunnyvale, California.

Karrer, Tony. Tags: Social, Bookmarks, eLearning Technology. Los Angeles, California Retrieved May 15, 2007 from http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/search?q=social+bookmarks

Van Manen, M. (2003). Researching Lived Experience. Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Ontario: Althouse Press

Blogging as an Instructional Tool and Acquisition of Knowledge

Upon introducing myself to my peers in an online course, I discussed my new use of a personal blog and the reasons for me beginning such an endeavor. Our instructor questioned in one posting by asking “…have you found that blogs can be applied as an instructional tool to "...facilitate the acquisition of knowledge" (Palloff and Pratt, p. xv).”

This indeed was one of my initial reasons for starting a blog. A presenter at a recent conference spoke to the fact that he believed he had learned more in a year of blogging then in his academic career (Brent Schlenker). His enthusiasm for the method was contagious and inspired several conference attendees to venture into the blogosphere as well.

The blogosphere (by wiki.com definition) is extremely important in that it explains the robust collaborative, social, and cultural network that develops between individual blogs. Most authors of blogs tend to read, comment, and link to other blog postings. In essence they build upon one another’s thoughts, expanding ideas and concepts as each new author posts to their blog. Often authors present questions to one another as well as on ideas that they have generated or to concepts that they are investigating.

A blog certainly can act as a great repository for the information that I come across and collect. Frequently I search around the internet looking at websites, reviewing RSS feeds and reading other bloggers postings. In doing this I am seeking out new elearning tools, concepts and developments that may of be of interest to myself. These items I can then summarize or link to for future reference. In finding several key blog authors I have also been able to utilize them almost as libraries of information for items that they have found significant and interesting.


References
Blogosphere. (2007, April 30). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:38, May 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blogosphere&oldid=127017030


Palloff, R.M. & Pratt, K. (2003). The Virtual Student. A Profile and Guide to Working with Online Learners. San Francisco: Jossey Bass

Schlenker, Brent. Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development. Phoenix, Arizona. http://elearndev.blogspot.com/

Advantages/Disadvantages of Discussion Boards in the Online Classroom

After recently starting an online course I was surprised at the format in which it was presented to the participants. Having taking many online courses through several different institutions, this was the first one in which a study guide was present as a tool. I posted a question on the discussion board regarding this and the discussion that ensued was very interesting.

Some students were very familiar and pleased with the guide, some welcomed the guide as an offline resource, and some were quite taken back and in fact had their enthusiasm for the course diminished. Regardless of the reaction to the format of the course the ability of all the participants to state their feelings over this small issue was wonderfully captured within a discussion board.

One student stated quite clearly one of the great advantages of these discussion boards:

"I don't think anyone would dispute your point of view Mr. X. I didn't think we were for or against anyone, but expressing opinions as we might if we met face to face. In a regular classroom, this is what we might do, explore our opinions, gain perspectives and carry on. Is this possibly revealing the kinds of things we have to plan for in an online course? In online learning we don't have face-to-face or continuity of exploring a topic. Time passes between comments. Opinions may be formed without exploration. To me challenging thinking is what learning is about. Is someone right or wrong? Not necessarily. Depends upon what you believe the goal of learning is. We could all agree, but do we want groupthink to happen?

You mention learning style...we do have preferences, but usually adults have honed a number of styles. Our text speaks of trying to get at all learning styles throughout a course, but that it is unrealistic to expect to be able to address every style all the time. I don't really feel I know anyone here well enough to say that the course may not match their learning style. In fact, I frequently do learning styles analysis with adults taking courses and I'm always surprised at what the results are...learning styles are difficult to predict from a cursory view.
Thanks for the challenging ideas.


Discussion boards/threads are a great resource tool for allowing participants to freely express their thoughts on a common topic at their own pace and leisure. Participants can scroll forwards and backwards through a conversation to see the overall structure. A sense of virtual communities can be established through frequent contributors. Also as Lucy mention they basically replace the face-to-face discussions that occur within the classroom setting.

Mr. K does point out a significant disadvantage of these discussions and one as facilitators in which we need to be attuned. “Sometimes in haste and inexperience, participants of a discussion board post a message that, after reading a few responses to, wish they could retract. Before the original author knows it the discussion has gone off in a different direction.”

Discussion threads can become complicated and go off topic from the original posting. The can also become tedious as one general thought often splits into many thoughts (posts) and then each of these need to be responded to separately. This is where some participants will begin to feel the threads become more argumentative instead of collaborative.

This is where as facilitators we can monitor many of these discussions and be sure to keep the participants on track to the main initial thought/post. New ideas that emerge and are less related can be placed into new discussions for participants to expand upon. As facilitators we should remain open to keeping discussions fairly fluent and moderate those posts that may be extremely negative, personally attacking and devastating to the groups’ existence. (Palloff and Pratt, 2003, pg. 106)

References

Palloff, R.M. & Pratt, K. (2003). The Virtual Student. A Profile and Guide to Working with Online Learners. San Francisco: Jossey Bass

Blogging Code of Conduct

After my pleading to my friend Kathy to keep her new blog up regarding her upcoming trip India. I was so pleased to see today that it is still alive and well. It's going to be a long journey not only once she is there, but just the process it has taken her to be allowed to go and to soothe her family and friends into understanding and believing that it is what she "needs" to do.

So in searching for some information on the history of blogging I came across Tim O'Reilly's:
Call for a Bloggers Code of Conduct. Some of the beginning and developing points are:

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments..
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

I think these points are well worth reading upon to see his expanded definitions. Not only are they great ideas to act upon in the blogging world, but can be transferred into the corporate boardroom, classroom, and basically any place where people come together to generate thoughts, ideas and collaboration.

Is Blogging Self-Serving?

I was so excited the other day and mentioned it in a previous post "Turning others on to blogging" . Two days ago my new blogging friend, Kathy, and I were discussing how great I thought her's looked and by reading her first post why I now understood and could stand by her decision to go to India.

The two of us sit about 30 feet from one another in a library setting, but you would never know it's a library as we are running back and forth giddy ("can a thirty something and fifty something be giddy...sure why not?") about something new we've discover to blog, a new title, a new add-in.

This excitement between the two of us was quickly deflated when another co-worker firstly insulted some aspects of her site (he hasn't seen mine yet) and then secondly stated that blogging is nothing more then egotistical and self-serving.

Our backs went up so quickly. How dare he take such a stuffy and limited view of the purpose of blogging. Kathy was now threating to take off her blog before it even really got going.

Egotistic by definition is (dictionary.com)

1. pertaining to or characterized by egotism.
2. given to talking about oneself; vain; boastful; opinionated.
3. indifferent to the well-being of others; selfish.

Sure there are some people out there that only want you to know what they are eating now and how many times they went to the washroom today. But I'm guessing the majority of them truly are portals of information. The blogs I want to read aren't the ones that are talking about themselves "boastfully". The one's I'm looking at and admire are the ones that disseminate a variety of information and experiences that the composer has found truly fascinating and wants to share it.

The definition of self-serving (dictionary.com):

1. preoccupied with one's own interests, often disregarding the truth or the interests, well-being, etc., of others.
2. serving to further one's own selfish interests.

Again the blogs I am looking to for ideas and inspiration are the same ones that are looking to try and help others with "the best of the best" of any particular topic and/or are looking for input and collaboration on a subject. Certainly not the ones that aren't trying to share facts or "the truth". Any blog that might be shamelessly promoting their own self interests is most likely a blog I will never stumble upon, nor will the people I'm looking to in "my blogging community" referencing either.

I am happy to report Kathy's blog is still alive and well and she has a billion new ideas to post regarding her upcoming adventure. Also, for those who would like to discovery a little more on the history of blogging, I found a nice little history and origins at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog.

Collective Spaces for Groups

One task that was assigned to me months ago was to come up with a great collaboration space where members of a training and organization development network could share resources, info, speakers, templates and more together. We realized that we all were probably doing the same work (over and over), looking for speakers that we think had great messages for our staff, and we're probably developing the same template that 4 other members already have designed.

I googled and goolged looking for just the right egroup. There in fact use to be a site called egroups which I used years ago for a book club. I use to like it simply because it had everything I needed in a site and was simple to navigate. There was the typical member list, discussion board, file centre, photos, calendar and polls. It seems hard now to find all of these items in one location. Google groups is not bad but was seemed to be missing the calendar. You can use the google calendar, but when you have to explain to "non-techies" how to add it in, you begin to lose members. I know that the group I'm aiming for needs one simple point and click package. myegroups.com doesn't seem to have a file sharing area.

After the Boston conference I was convinced that a wiki was the way to go. Now I'm not so sure on that. I would love to see a great example of a "group collaboration" site on a wiki. I read through "The World of Wikis" by David Lenehan and tried out many of the suggested wikis here. I can easily navigate myself around the page, setting up new pages, adding headings, discussions, photos, etc. However, I know my audience and I fear that if it isn't simple from the beginning then I will lose them and their keen interest to get something like this up and running.

Items I have tried

• pbwiki
• wikia
• wetpaint
• collectivex
• myegroups
• google groups
• yahoo groups
• gather
• wik.is

I have until June 1st before I have to present my "brilliant" idea to them. Any suggestions here would be greatly welcomed. Pehaps I haven't found the right one yet or am looking at THE known wikis/egroups in the wrong light.

Customizing my blog

I've had a ton fun over the last few days playing around with the format, colours, background, etc of my blog. I wanted to put in more picture elements of some of my own photographs. I really love taking pictures and have taken so many on my travels that I feel they are truly a piece of who I am. I wanted to capture that side of me in my blog somehow and have added a few into the overall scheme.

I've taken computer programming in the past (many, many moons ago) so I was familiar enough with playing around with the html of the page. But once you start you want to keep seeing "what happens if I increase this, remove this, add this?" It turns into a bit of a game and after some time you finally come to something that you really are proud of. Of course the danger here for me however, is that I'll want to keep changing it, adding to it. Basically keeping it fresh if not for visitors, surely for me.

Turning other's on to blogging

I was just showing my co-worker my blog and all you can do with them. Not that mine is all you can do with them. But it's great to see how excited she was to start and create her own. She is getting ready for a 6 week journey to India and thought it would be a great idea to be able to share what it has been like preparing for travel, the stories she hears, the warnings she gets, the pleads not to go, but more importantly what the actual journey. Especially all through the eyes of a woman travelling alone.

I can't wait to help her get set up and see all she sees through her words.

eLearning 2.0 - I'm trying to DO IT

eLearning 2.0 - Go Do It : eLearning Technology

Funny just when I really needed it in my professional and academic career I was able to get the the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering. Then just when I needed some guidance on where to start and what to get excited about I heard a speaker there named Tony Karrer. I got excited about blogging, feed reading, and wikis and all the potential I could use them for in my classes and more so my workplace and where I want to take myself over the next year.

I got back from the conference and started this blogging and not only that but I'm keeping it up. It because a little addictive though. The more I read and learn the more I want to express and share. But I'm starting to realize that is exactly what Tony and Brent Schlenker meant when they said that the best way to start learning how to use it and what you can get from blogging is to just start trying.

I mention this in my online course recently and used this blog to introduce myself to the class. Many of the questions that came up from my classmates were most of the same ones that came up during discussion during the Guild sessions. It's wonderful to feel a little bit like a SME even if you aren't quite there yet.

Now I have been collecting rss feeds and trying to get through the mass that I have accumulated so that I can just concentrate more on the new material that comes in. But again, just when I needed more info on elearning 2.0 there is a post from Tony on his blog eLearning 2.0 - Go Do It. The timing couldn't be better.

This is one of the joys that I am finding with feeds, blogging and the such; the learning truly becomes just in time. As I need it I find it and better yet it often just appears. What's on the mind of you tends to be on the minds of others in the same collaboration space.

Still Using Paper & Pencil

I am disheartened that another year has gone by in our organization and we still have to test all of our 2200+ staff with paper and pencil. We must test them yearly on a set of core curriculum and the only method I currently have to accomplish this task is to give them a paper booklet with all the learning material and a multiple choice test at the end of each module. An answer sheet that is completed by filling in the little bubble of the answer you think is most appropriate. Then when that staff member is finished their booklet and tests, they pass it on to the next staff member. 1 booklet for every 10 staff members.

I then get to scan all the answer sheets into a Xerox ProCentre which captures the sheet as a .tiff. I then use a program add-in for Excel called FormIdea 3.6 to "read" all the sheets and mark them.

Well this may all seem ridiculous, but it's a huge technological step for us. 2 years ago I was marking these all by hand. 6 months worth of marking and documenting and that was with 4 volunteers helping me. Needless to say the volunteers no longer come to me when I have work for them; I wouldn't either.

So what are some of the constraints I face doing all this?

• Well we can only have the 1:10 ratio of booklets because of how much they cost to print and once the testing is over there is no longer a need for the booklets.
• An organization of this size and not everyone has access to a computer or even an email account
• I'm a project of 1 as far as this testing is concerned
• Even when I do scan the answer sheets in, I can only do 30-40 at a time otherwise my computer crashes.
• My "fill-in-the-bubble" answer sheets last year had the letters "a,b,c,d" in as the choices, this made the reader incorrectly mark tests, so I had to update and fix the answer sheet this year

Overall, I think even with some of the concerns that fall around this project, I've worked around them last year and feel that I have improved them this year. I'm hoping the whole thing progresses much smoother and that the marking tests to reporting time will be decreased drastically.

I just can't imagine what the staff will think when I tell them next year we can do it all online. Christmas is coming early with a new LMS later this month. Just not quite in time for this testing period, but I can wait.