Nexus

On her blog, Musings about Using Technology as a Tool for Learning, Sharon Peters talked recently about the “evolution of the über-blogger“.

I love the phrase, “uber-blogger”, and wish I’d thought of it. The following is based on a comment I made to Sharon’s original post. It (my comment) seems to have vanished into the blogosphere, but I thought it was worth writing, so I’ve added to it and posted it here instead.

I wasn’t sure what to call this phenomenon, but it is extremely powerful! I first witnessed it during NECC 2007. I was only able to physically attend the Edubloggercon immediately before the NECC conference and then had to return home. Once home, I used my RSS reader to follow the rest of the conference. One of the first feeds I pulled in was a skype chat posted on Jeff Utecht’s blog, from the Skype conversation held during Will Richardson’s presentation, “From Hand It In to Publish It: Re-Envisioning Our Classrooms“. This just blew my mind! There were eleven people involved in this conversation. Some of the participants were physically present in Will’s presentation; others were “skyped in” from elsewhere.

In itself it is extremely valuable to read the notes and interpretations of edubloggers who so freely share from the conference sessions they attend. But to see the conversation that took place among that group of skypers during Will’s presentation was extraordinary! It added so much depth to what was already an outstanding presentation conference session. To get a feel for yourself, try this:

• Open Will’s wiki page and follow his session outline;
• Listen to the podcast of the session posted by Wesley Fryer;
• Follow the skype notes posted by Jeff Utecht.

Do you get the same sense of “Wow!” that I do? This is blogging on a new level, hence uber-blogging.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I was travelling last week in Saskatchewan and following the Building Learning Communities conference being held in Boston. As I followed the conference via Google reader, I found that the backchanelling activities started at NECC not only continued, but flourished. Cathy Nelson wrote about her experiences taking part in BLC07 sessions by skyping David Jakes. Just search her blog for BLC and you’ll see the incredible impact this type of participatory activity had on her professional learning - and she didn’t physically attend the conference!

I also noticed that the uber-bloggers were honing their new skills. David Jakes in my mind is becoming a master at facilitating backchannelling sessions. Here’s a good example. David “hosted” the skype chat for Ewan McIntosh’s session - Is Your Public Body Public? Read through the chatcast and you’ll notice David played a role beyond conversation participant. He facilitated the chat by:

• reminding readers/skypers of the session title
• articulating main points as they were introduced by the presenter
• summarizing main points
• clarifying skypers’ comments

Last but not least David added a few text conventions such as italics to make it easier for the rest of us to follow.

Call it what you will - uber-blogging, backchanelling, whatever, there’s a lot to think about here and I know I need some more processing time. I need to think about this from different perspectives: professional development leader, project designer and facilitator, teacher, learner…

Right now though, I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the uber-bloggers who so willingly and effectively share these rich learning experiences!

Technorati tags: blogging uber-blogging NECC07 NECC2007 NECC 2007 NECC 07 BLC07 BLC 07 BLC2007 BLC 2007

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 3:29 am and is filed under conferences, connected learning, personal learning network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.