Nexus

I joined the social network EduBloggerWorld shortly after attending the Edubloggercon in Atlanta this past June. Created by edubloggers Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis, Darren Draper and Steve Hargadon, EduBloggerWorld has as its stated mission, “Facilitating connections and community for educational bloggers worldwide.”

There seems to be a real emphasis in this social network on developing community, not just sharing ideas and resources, but also defining common goals and taking steps toward reaching those goals. One step involves organized virtual meet-ups. I think these will go a long way to promoting a sense of community, bringing a very personal touch to the online experience! I was glad I was able to make the Elluminate session with Julie Lindsay last night. It was great to hear other bloggers share their excitement about the impact of blogging in their professional lives. I tried to attend the session this afternoon facilitated by Vicki Davis, but today was my day for one disaster and a million and one interruptions, so unfortunately I finally just had to give up.

The EduBloggerWorld community has designated today as ‘Window to the EduBlogger World’. We are all invited to share our experiences with blogging and post a photo of our own blogging area, showing others what we are looking at when we blog.

This sounded like fun, so first thing this morning I took a picture of the view from my desk.

I work with the YES I Can! Science project, an outreach project of the Faculty of Science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. As this is a good two and a half hour commute from my house, and office space at the university is at a premium, I’ve elected to work from my home office. I’ve been doing this for several years now and have learned that if I am going to have any chance at a life that doesn’t involve working 24/7, I need to have a designated office in my home. Fortunately for me this office has beautiful views of my porch and front garden.

After I posted this picture, I was interrupted by a major database error, (human error), that took most of the day to rectify. Throughout the day, this post was percolating in the back of my mind. When I got back to my blog and had a second look at my photo, I realized that this is the “micro” view from my desk; there’s a bigger picture of where I blog.

I blog globally, on all of the project sites I create and facilitate, where we connect K-12 students from around the world with mentors, experts, and scientists working in the field.

I have learned so much from these blogging experiences:

• a 12 year old can become impassioned about laboratory work, and can emerge as the expert in “tissue-sampling techniques”, interpreting the researchers’ posts for the rest of us;
• a teenager in a residential treatment facility can find dignity and purpose in the anonymity of a blog;
• aboriginal students in northern Canada can find powerful voices through blogging;
• students can take over the purpose and function of their class blog, leaving the teacher in the role of commenter;
• scientists, engineers and astronauts can become engaged with the thoughtful questions and observations of K-12 students.

These lessons, I learned quickly and early in my blogging experiences with students. They excite and motivate me to keep up with hundreds of student bloggers at a time.

It’s only been in the last six months that I’ve recognized the value of blogging for my own professional growth. I’ve discovered that blogging starts with reading. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? It’s not though. Until you read widely, you won’t recognize the power and wisdom of the “network.” Through the “magic” of RSS, I have been able to pull together an incredibly effective personal learning network from the edublogspere. I have learned more in a shorter period of time than at any other point in my very long career - from reading, commenting, reflecting and conversing with edubloggers. My learning network has become almost organic; it changes as my own thinking progresses and morphs as conversations start, finish and evolve. My Google reader regularly drops and adds feeds, letting me pull in, aggregate, tag and take part in the conversations that resonate with me at any given moment.

I’ve also come to realize that writing can be a powerful element in my thinking process, helping me to pull my thoughts together or just let them flow organically. I use my blog to start conversations, archive my thoughts and experiences, and make connections between my ideas and those of other edubloggers. I find as I re-read my drafts looking to find just the right wording, that I’m asking myself a lot of questions that move beyond semantics or style:

• “so what do you really mean to say?”
• “why do you think that?”
• “is there another perspective?”
• “what else do you need to know?”
• “what next?”

As much as I believe that you blog first of all for yourself, I also feel the need to be part of a community. I find it difficult to speak in an empty room; after a while my voice trails off. Similarly I think it’s hard to blog as a solitary experience. Interaction, (through commenting), is critical to pushing thinking. EduBloggerWorld is helping to build community, giving edubloggers a “home base”, linking our personal blogs and facilitating the advancement of common agendas. I look forward to seeing where we can go together over the next few months…

Technorati tags: edubloggerworld2007 edubloggerworld edubloggerworldmeetup2007 YES I Can! Science McMaster University

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 11:29 pm and is filed under social networks, about blogging. 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.