Overwhelming amounts of information

I’m gettnig very interested in reading more and more about the rise of social media in education and the world is starting to provide more and more information that I can read but I am really starting to feel overwhelmed and unable to manage all that information.

Now I know I’ve been warned of this in those things I read about preparing our learners for learning in the digital world, but I can’t even manage it myself.  I would love to be able to set aside one afternoon a week to read and make notes but even then, when I make those notes – where do they go, how do I recall them.

Blogging is a good idea and I’ve had a go at this, and am doing it now to reflect, I can put my notes in my blog but my problem then lies in tagging.

I’ve also tried social bookmarking, I save all the artciles I’ve enjoyed or found useful in Delicious and Diigo! Too many places I know. But again, when it comes to needing to refer to something I just start a new search as it’s too tedious a thought to have to scrawl through my delicious tags for something.

I’ve tried making notes in online note pads such as Springpad and Evernote but these have the same problems, I’ve even used OneNote on my desktop.

I’ve now got things stored in so many places I need several days to do a stock take and file it all better. Maybe I should just print everything and have a big file – joking I promise.

I also want to integrate notes I take at events/workshops/informal chats.

It also came across me today when reading an article about live blogging, and the authors fantastic passion to share your knowledge online. We are increasingly sharing things we find, therefore for every artcile read, conference attended, and workshop snored through, say 10 people blog or tweet about it, that’s 10 extra sources of information over and above the source.

What can I take away from this reflection? I know I want to keep better notes of what I learn so I can find things more easily in the future.  Filtering sure is a key skill but how do you learn/teach filtering?

A reflection on blogging

In the tutor group discussion forum I’ve came round to thinking that the blogs enable us to know we are on track. If we are writing up our notes from readings we’ve done, we can read other people’s blogs to make sure we have interpreted it correctly and if they describe it in a different way we can pick up a different meaning or alternative view.

The tutor’s role isn’t to tell us if we’re wrong or right; we have each other for that…

Collaborative learning through blogs….hmmmmm

Make a note for this for the ECA!

TMA 3 – I think it’s finished

Finally finished TMA 3, luckily had the foresight to ask for an extension. When this cours started I wondered why and how I would be motivated to put the effort into a 1000 word TMA that wasn’t going to count towards my final marks.

The TMA is an essay plan for the final Assignment which is worth 1/2 of the course marks and is 6000 words. It’s very clever because it gets us thinking about the final assessment before the last minute, it gets some research out of the way, and we get some feedback at this stage formally to stop us heading down the wrong track.

Although it is unassessed I was keen to do well even in this TMA, and was equally concerned about presentation and word count that I would in a normal assessment.

I think it’s ready now, but will sleep on it and submit it tomorrow. The sooner I get it in the sooner it’ll be marked.

I finally decided on looking at blogs and e-conferencing. The first dilemma being what to call e-conferencing, virtual classrooms, web conferencing etc. In this TMA I haven’t defined the technology but will do in the ECA so will talk about the different terminology there.

I’m approaching it from the perspctive of how technologies can enhance social learning, reducing the isolation of distance learning students and peer to peer support.

The hardest bit was finding 4 resources published in 2009! A mad requirement but a requirement all the same, something to do with the learning outcomes of awareness of current issues in elearning.

Openness in blogging

In my forum posting for Week 17 A 6 I wrote some stuff I didn’t want to repeat in my blog. It was sensitive stuff, and the people I’m talking about would know who they are. I didn’t want this going public in my blog.

Is this one of the ways forums have an advantage over blogs…

Why are we using blogs and not just doing the work on our PC?

Today one of our MBA students asked me this today. I asked this question myself some time ago but since doing this course and seeing the potential benefit for support networks through blogging I can now see more value in using a blog to share my learning and help me to learn from others. I felt very confident in replying to this forum message asking this question because of my studies and experience on H800. I think we should do more on the value of the different CMCs at the start of the course.

The second Kerawalla paper (link below with notes) studid 15 more students than the first, and extended the 4-factors framework of audience, presentation, comments and community to include the relationship of blogging with other e-tools on the course; the functionality of the software; and the requirements of the course.

Although the studies together only interviewed a total of 25 students, they found the benefits of blogging were:

• “a blog is ownded and personalised. It’s my site, I’m in charge. Space for own learning, thinking, planning, note taking, etc.
• a more informal space that a forum, let my hair down and be myself. Can write more as people are not obliged to read it”

But: “It was confusing’ and another that ‘we can comment on each others’ posts both in the blogs and in the forums, do I put it here [blog] or do I put it there [forum]? Sometimes, this resulted in ‘a lot of people repeating the same comments they had on their blog, in a posting on the forum’ and this student eventually stopped using his blog because he felt ‘there were too many places to have to go to’.”

1. ‘How do I want to use my blog in relation to other elearning tools I use?’

To develop a supportive environment where I can share my thoughts with the rest of my course peers, I can help others progress with their studies, others can help me by challenging, adding further insight, or simply empathising/being sociable. I really enjoyed Week 11 when more people were blogging, and we were all commenting on each others’ blogs. There was a really informal, community spirit going on. It was very enjoyable, but this disappeared as the TMA got closer. I’d like to see a move away from the forums and more blogging going on but we, as students, mentioned the same issue as highlighed above, in that we didn’t know where to look/post, often repeated posts – eg some people would post something in the forum, and then copy it into their blog – so the question is do I subcribe to her blog or just read the forums. Of course I do both, because what if she doesn’t copy it every time and what if something new enters the blog….

2. ‘What can blogging offer that other tools cannot?’

As Kerawalla et al, see below, found the forum isn’t as “free” as the blogs. The interaction that took place in the blogs was much more student lead, community focused and fun. The forums seem to be the domain of formal posts out of necessity and difficult to follow threads. Of course, blogs might be more inward looking as you might only read your own blog and comments therein.

3. ‘Do I want a blog that is not provided by my institution?’

Yes, and I’ve got one here. I tried using hte OU blogs in H800 but found the lack of editting tool and individualisation frustrating and as quoted in this report, we were informed that the blog would not be accessibly on completion of finishing our studies with the OU which meant that if by that time I decided to continue blogging for CPD or just social reasons I’d have to set up a new blog. I tried a few different open source blogs and also the Uni of Warwick blog system which has won loads of awards but decided to go for WordPress. I didn’t even want to use a Uni of Warwick blog system being staff there -  1. I might not have felt as free and 2. it can’t go with me when I leave.

The trouble with….

commenting on lots of blogs, writing my own blogs, contributing to the forum is:

how will I know where I’ve said what or who has said what where so I can go back to it for the TMA! Should I really have a delicious Tag for all things that I’ve said or read that are interesting….HELP I think I’m going to meet myself in a parallel world soon!