Then, a little out of order as I often tend to be, I went looking for a blog post I didn’t agree with.  I didn’t get very far before I found myself on Hey-monkeybrain looking at some rather silly but intriguing debate questions. It wouldn’t have been hard to find something I disagreed with there as the whole site is set up not for blogging so much as debating.  An interesting tourist site for sure. But rather than posting I found myself needing to go back to drdyers site from where I had been referred to hey-monkeybrain, to post a question. (Day 4 taken care of except that it wasn’t a great questions, but hey, I’ll get better.) So still working on Day 5, finding what I disagree with, I managed to skip ahead to Day 6. After responding to another comment I came back and read that there is netiquette for doing that. (Who knew? I’ll get it right next time.) Day 7, I’ve done a few days ago almost right after my very steep learning leap into this challenge. I may be ready to tackle a repeat of that one soon.  So, tomorrow I’ll move on to finding something outside my niche, considering the allow/not allow comments debate  and my own comment audit.

First off, it is a great question. Like blogging it general the question really made me think because when I write to post, as opposed to writing privately for my own clarity in thinking, it matters what I say. The blog challenge has made that even more apparent for me because by being encouraged to go and comment on other people’s blogs, I’m now finding that others come and find my blog.

So, what I learned? The first and most delightful thing is really a whole paradigm shift. It hasn’t happened just from the challenge alone but really from the convergence of a variety of factors, probably some of which made me decide to take on the challenge in the first place. That shift is about the amazing connection and webbing that can happen with blogging. Previously I had thought about it almost as a semi public version of my own private journal. I was never ever writing for an audience even though I knew others could read it, I hadn’t really thought about that they would. Now, the understanding that not only can others read it, but in fact they will read it adds a whole twist to the idea of being able to engage in a dialogue. I see blogging much differently. It has much more relevance towards being able to create voice and actively work for change. I’m interested in change in education, specifically change in the way we teach. Blogging has become a potentially powerful tool in promoting that change.

That leads to the second best thing I’ve learned in the challenge and that is that blogging is not just about doing what I am doing right now. To really be a blogger I can’t just write my own blog. I have to be an active member of the blogging community and so I have to get out there and read and comment on other people’s blogs. That is equally as important because it is the participation and active membership that makes blogging such an incredibly powerful change agent. But like any good conversation I learn from both listening to others (reading blogs) and exercising my voice (writing my blog).

The third best thing is that there are a whole lot of tricks and tips, best practices if you will in this blogging world. I’ve only discovered the tip of the iceberg but I’m on the lookout for building my own toolbox of what these are. I’m starting with the questions I’m coming across: how to keep a conversation going, when to comment back, when to move a conversation back here to my own blog site, how to track comments, how to collate my favorite blog sites into one collection, how to best use tags and so many more that I’ll discover today. So this third best thing is really that it is an art that I’m only just beginning to learn to master.

With my increased interest in learning to use blogging to collaborate this will be an interesting undertaking to see what, if any difference this technology as a tool can make to my ability to collaborate. The challenge will be, can I find ways to get better at collaborating by making better use of the technology? Will blogging help me? Will commenting on other blogs lead to better collaboration? Or, are these completely separate things?  I wonder what others think about this. If you’re reading this perhaps you’d comment on your own ability to collaborate effectively with others and what difference technology is making for you? Does blogging help? What can I learn from you about how to be better at collaborating?

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
  • Typically I haven’t been doing my fair share of commenting at all. I comment when something catches my eye but that is not regular at all.
• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
  • By tracing my blog comments I’m not sure if this refers to comments that get posted on my blog or somehow keeping a link to the comments I post on other peoples sites, honestly something I hadn’t thought about before. For my own site I have the moderation features turned on. I have included a widget to track recent comments. When I do get posts I always follow up with checking out who it is that is responding, usually by visiting their site. Actually I blog a lot for my own clarity in thinking and so comments and tracking comments hasn’t been a huge interest. More recently I think I’m struck by the power of this medium and the potential to connect and share ideas. I’m much more interested which is why I’ve decided to participate in the 31 day blog challenge.
  • As for tracking the comments I post elsewhere, this is new idea for me and now I’m going to look into that. I haven’t used or investigated cocomment at all yet. Watch for an update as I go off exploring.
• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?
  • No pattern as yet.

Now off to visit Gina Trapini’s guide to commenting. It is actually pretty common sense but a good reminder. This would actually be a good resource for students when setting up blogging with a group. The idea of always needing to add new information to a blog comment can be daunting though. I might rephrase that as a new perspective or a good question. That would be worthwhile too. Interesting that there is no way to comment on her article.

And finally, I’ve just added a “comment08″ tag to this blog entry. I know a little about tag, but now I’m going to go and search out the ramifications of where that puts my entry.

Day 1 and already I’ve got new questions!

Through the global ed class, readings and discussion I am learning

•  to think about things as systems.  I’m trying to catch myself breaking anything into parts.  I know that I do that to manage and understand all kind of thing and I’m wondering what it would look like and how it would be different to not do that. I’m trying to look for connections between ideas, between concepts. This fits very much with the kind of research I’m trying to do, where I’m looking for patterns and generalizations.  Perhaps the shift to qualitative research is a beginning of acceptance of being less mechanistic.
• to really embrace knowledge as culturally constructed.  This isn’t new to me but framed differently now as I put it more into the perspective of system thinking. Understanding, for example, how much science has influenced not only science and how we approach investigation, but also how much mechanistic thinking has shaped so much of everything else in our western culture.  I’m considering time differently, language differently, religion or spirituality differently, even family systems differently. I love the consideration this adds to thinking about schools and curriculum.  Always I’ve been somewhat radical in my resistance to breaking school so much into subjects, concepts, test results, strategies and policies.  Now I’m beginning to understand why this has happened and am even more inclined to want to teach holistically, but with more theory behind me.
• to be able to be more optimistic about strategies for change. For this I loved the idea of the metaphor of the fractal. I loved grounding the think global, act local strategy in this metaphor; seeing the connection to chaos theory and to physics.  I loved having my mind opened up to the possibilities that this allows for. I felt as though this was the most optimistic and uplifting part of what we’ve looked at.

This class has led me off on to paths I didn’t expect to take.  I’m left with a pile of readings and even more curiosity than I started with… and lack of curiosity has never been a problem for me.  I want to explore more on the spiritual side.  My beginning investigations down that road have led me into the whole aboriginal world.  I feel like my journey is truly just beginning.