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Open Governance and Learning
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- Notification of research observation Wed, 2011-04-06 09:18
- End of the course - but it's not a good-bye Mon, 2011-04-04 12:32
- Week 6 - Task and guest of the weekl Wed, 2011-03-16 18:30
- Week 4 - Task of the week Tue, 2011-03-08 16:49
- live meetings - times and testing! Tue, 2011-03-08 14:44
Tools, including current Posterous blog
Hi all: I set the blog up yesterday, but forgot to gather email addresses from people during the meeting this evening. To repeat the blog info --
The address is http://open-governance-and-learning.posterous.com -- and after sign up you can post simply by writing an email to open-governance-and-learning@posterous.com.
But for that to work, you're going to need to be signed up. One easy way to do that is to go to the blog and click "Subscribe by email" (near the bottom of the page). Then I'll upgrade your subscription to "contributor" status and you should be good to go.
As for other tools - we have some good notes from the 1st evening meeting at http://piratepad.net/open-governance-and-learning. More ideas of things to try or tools others are already using can go into this thread. Thanks!
Marisa raises an important workflow question that I did not hear answered in the flashmeeting of Jan 27, 2011. I wonder too about pros and cons of using blogs and wikis, and order of events. Marisa, you mentioned you intended there would be individual blogs for writing individual assignments. Then later we could combine them in a wiki for the general public to edit? My tendency is to jump into helping edit and adding contributions to others' work in wikis. One possible problem with this approach: if participant-2 edits participant-1's wiki work, the 1st might prefer to have their own blog so they need not re-re-edit the 2nd one's changes. It might be better if there are both, places for people to post their own contributions, and places for mashing-up our group results. It may be better to work individually first and then combine later. I would like to know more about what Marisa was saying. Marisa, am Iunderstanding your comments and question about this?
Hi Katheryn!
Yes, you certainly understood my comments and question correctly. My suggestion was about having one blog for the all group, where to post individual assignments, in the form of thoughts/reflections/short summaries of readings and documents -for example in the same fashion as the P2PU Blog.
In addition to the blog, we can have a wiki to integrate all these individual assignments and create a collective product. Personally, I think it is important to have both the dimensions: individual work and collective output and having a blog and a wiki can enable both.
Both the tools can make the processes of learning and coaching more apparent as work progresses.
Let's take the use of the blog: it can allow a "studio-writing approach". Each peer, posting in the blog, also engages in "social writing" via the comment feature in the blog, with the other peers and perhaps also other external interlocutors who read the thoughts/reflections/summaries.
This way, individual peers no longer write alone even during the individual writing of their posts. Peers and other people can intervene and help in the process of discovery and invention, which is typical of writing.
In the end, we can mash-up the group results in a wiki.
The all process is visible and open to scrutiny.
Looking forward to reading your thoughts.
Note that (a) it is possible to edit one's blog posts after making them; (b) it may be possible for a user to go edit another user's blog posts (I haven't checked, but I think that is the case). In this sense we may be able to use the blog "as" a wiki as well.
However, people are going to have to start posting there first! - So I think it would be very good if we could come up with some small writing exercises for people to get started with.
I also am recalling your comment from the recent meeting that "written" outputs/processes may seem like the most obvious ones - but there are other useful things to try (ideas sketched particularly by Patrick by the pirate pad).
As another procedural thing to do: we could grab content from the pirate pad and edit it into blog posts. If someone wants to volunteer for that role (once a week) that would be cool. It's easier than being the course "scribe", that's for sure :) -- and could give a way for people who weren't at one meeting to get to know the ideas of the people who went to the other meeting. Also it will help us keep lots of space on the pirate pad :) -- replace content with a link to the updated blog post!
Good reminder, Joe! but we can upload videos, and pictures, and diagrams in the blog, I can see. So the blog itself does not constrain our choice of formats for the assignments.
"As another procedural thing to do: we could grab content from the pirate pad and edit it into blog posts. If someone wants to volunteer for that role (once a week) that would be cool. It's easier than being the course "scribe", that's for sure :) -- and could give a way for people who weren't at one meeting to get to know the ideas of the people who went to the other meeting. Also it will help us keep lots of space on the pirate pad :) -- replace content with a link to the updated blog post!"
Could you say more about this? So the primary function of PiratePad is real time group editing? (Spectacular experience) and documents there are best kept small for that reason?
Yeah, that's pretty much my feeling. It's nice to have a clean and simple "landing" page at http://piratepad.net/open-governance-and-learning -- and so content that we generate there should be wikignomed off either into other pads for further group editing (whether synchronous or asynchronous) -- or onto the blog for more "archival" purposes.
Tomorrow I will be doing some wikignoming off into the blog
At least for the moment, I would encourage people to use Piratepad "as" a wiki. If we decide we need something in addition, we can pretty easily set that up for week 2.
PS. Full disclosure: I was the one who wrote the wiki links plugin for Etherpad ;). So I know it's a bit limited -- but I think it's hard to beat Etherpad's real-time features...
After reading this forum discussion, I've composed a proposal. Please comment and suggest changes.
Individual & Group Workflow Tools -
Draft Proposal - So perhaps we can expect or require that individual bloggers make final editing decisions over their own blog-entry content. They would have "revision control". Group documents (with tools such as wikis like etherpad) would then be edited by course participants, with transparent background deliberations about editing decisions? Course organizers would moderate if there were uncomfortable conflicts?
What about public wiki editing? Might we design a future course around group admin-moderating of the resulting publicly edited wiki?? Participants of previous courses could be especially invited. Or should a public forum for discussion of this course be made now?
I think people are likely to be nervous about making major edits to anyone else's blog posts (even if it's possible! - I haven't checked). So I think that your proposal about how to use the blog will naturally happen.
Etherpad seems best for quick drafting of something to be refined elsewhere, or for conversations. I don't think "conflicts" are very likely to arise.
Public wiki seems like a good idea. In another course last quarter, we just made pages on Wikiversity in a fairly informal manner, see http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Arided. That could be expanded (e.g. if we want to take results from this course and make more formal course notes on Wikiversity, soliciting broader input). Depends on what people want.
Thanks, I was also wondering how to edit the posts on the blog as I couldn't find the edit feature. I would agree about being cautious on editing each others opinions. I guess as discussed, this would be an area to brainstorm whatever ideas and sharing we have and in the end to collate and structure the information in a way deemed fit.
Hi Maya: to edit posts you need to be logged in on the Posterous site.
I agree that "editorial remarks" in comments would generally be better than direct edits to others posts (except maybe in the case of copyediting).