Full Circle Associates

Steven Downes pointed to this post by Konrad Glogowski today, blog of proximal development » Tools Interiorized which is full of juicy things about the impact of blogs and groups. First, a few snippets for context and because they are so rich, intermixed with a bit of commentary. The implications here for community, especially forms such as communities of practice is signficant.

...when we started experiencing problems with the class blogosphere, my students were the first ones to notice and complain. I heard many comments which helped me fully understand what our blogging community means to my students. They complained about unreliable access to their work. Many of them actually said that they couldn’t prepare for assignments or test their knowledge of some of the texts we’d been reading. I listened to all these carefully and took notes every single time something was said to me about technical problems. I have included excerpts from my log notes below:

“I feel like I’ve lost all my binders”
“Now that my blog is gone, English feels different”
“How are we gonna discuss things?”

“You know that assignment last night that we did on Word?”
“Yes. Did you do it?”
“I did, but writing it felt strange.”
“How so?”
“It was like - like talking to someone who was not listening.”

...It quickly became clear from what they were saying to me that blogging was synonymous with English class, that their class consisted primarily of a community and that its absence had an impact on learning.

...I realized that they had formed a bond, not just with each other as learners but also with the community itself. My students got used to inhabiting a space which, as virtual as it was, constituted an important part of their learning experience. When the space became temporarily inaccessible, learning itself seemed to be put on hold.

So we have the first interesting intersection here between technology, the community and it's processes. They "got used" to things. They adapted and adopted to the container Konrad offered them. And when it broke, the implications emerged. Typically, we don't notice this stuff until something goes awry! Note for community technology stewards: find opportunities to see these cues before the dang thing breaks!

After "fixing" the technology situation with new software...

As soon as they were able to create their new individual blogs, the first question was:

“What about the old posts?”

The new space, I realized, was not really a blog or a community. It was an empty space and almost all of them were overcome by a need to populate their new blogs. They have been working very hard since but many also insisted on transferring their old entries to the new blogs. Their blogging identity, it seems to me, is so inextricably linked to their writing that abandoning their old work seemed somehow wrong. Many were very disappointed that the comments they received cannot be automatically moved with the posts.

Hm, so identity as manifest by their artifacts. Makes a lot of sense to me. Would they have felt the same way if it was a wiki?

....This experience confirmed my belief that blogging is about creating communities. My students didn’t really miss writing itself. Had that been the case, they wouldn’t have complained about writing in notebooks. What they missed was situated writing, a cognitive activity situated within a specific space that fosters cognitive engagement. They missed interactions, interactions with texts and with each other through texts. They missed the sense of participation and their audience. They missed the exploratory environment of the class blogosphere. The student who, having written his assignment in a notebook, complained about feeling like he was talking to himself, missed making connections, he missed the web of correspondences that they have been weaving since September. Their efforts to transfer their entries from their old blogs to the new ones were really efforts to rebuild that network.

I know that the network will continue to emerge through their writing. The network is not an exterior aid that helps them write. It emerges because of their work, through their work. The software we use to create these communities, to enable this kind of learning, is a tool interiorized - a tool that has become an integral part of who they are as learners

What I wondered about here was how much of this was about context. How much about ownership and control of one's artifacts, and how much about the audience -- in this case their teacher who might be grading on those artifacts! I strongly concur about the interiorization, but I also think there are exterior factors at work. And it is the "coming together" of internal (indivdiual) and external (group?) factors that creates this juicy space. Or lets it emerge.

See also Konrad's postBlogging as Attempts at Understanding. Well, keep reading the whole dang blog. Lots of thoughtful blogging. Thanks, Konrad!

Categories: community_indicators, communitiesofpractice, blogging, community, situatedlearning