Depressing or what?
Here is Ewan McIntosh’s comment prompted by the anonymity post on Andrew’s blog: I think people will still love forums because they don’t have to invest anything of themselves in them - they are the easiest way to suck goodness out of the web with minimal investment. No site for each user to set up, no need to track conversations because the conversations are linear and wonderfully, boringly simple to understand, and, by being anonymous, you can defer all responsibility and go for the easy polemic/rant or follow the crowds in the ‘me-too’. You get the latter in blogs, too, but they tend not to last long as people give up reading them and the owners stop investing in them.
That’s the difference in the name for me.
Glow might change some habits but anonymity only changes the last part of that fateful equation. Forums alone are not the answer. Forums are only part of the mix for me.
This sums up all too well the attitude that probably limits the use of blogs by the people who flock to the “boringly simple” conversations. I mean I know he’s famous and is a guru and revered by bloggers generally, but he is also wrong here. In my opinion.
“they don’t have to invest anything of themselves in them “: Some do, some don’t. If you know people personally who also contribute to forums, they may actually invest a great deal of themselves in some forums. It depends on the forum and the contributors. Thing is you can’t tell from the posts any more than you can with a blog.
“they are the easiest way to suck goodness out of the web with minimal investment” Outrageous! I know forums where people contribute simply in order to advance good practice and share ideas. “suck goodnes out of the web”? Offensive.
If blogs are to become more of a feature of teachers’ toolkits, the teachers will first have to feel that they are accessible to everyone. I remember Gilly Salmon talking about the social aspect of online communication being an important prerequisite for collaboration. That’s not going to happen with bloggers rubbishing the way other online contributors choose to work. As Ewan points out there are less good blogs and better ones, the same as there are less good forums and better ones. Maybe identifying what makes them better would be a more useful step. after reading that sort of comment on a blog I’d not be likely to want to get to know the person who wrote it better. Sorry Ewan’s Mum - your blog is friendly, interesting and normal!
On the other hand, I listened to all of Will’s podcast today and heard him say he was going to reduce the number of blogs in his RSS feed (did I get the terminology right there?) because there was too much navel-gazing going on and he needed to get out there in the “real” world to convert non-bloggers. But it’s probably still important for someone to identify what makes blogs useful or not.
Actually, if it wasn’t for Ewan’s Mum’s blog, I think I might give this up now.
Gosh. Bit of a responsibility, that! Please don’t chuck it just when I’ve found you ……
I have to say that I blog to keep my writing going as much as anything: just lke the kids, I need audience awareness to save me from eMail sloppiness. And of course it gives me a platform for my rants and hobby-horses!
I certainly hope you don’t chuck it too! I’m always facinated by reading what someone has to say on a subject I’m interested in.
I gave up subscribing to Will (and a few other American “greats”) a while ago, as the thing that bothers me most about blogs is reading the same thing over and over again.
Where blogging scores in my mind is that it offers ease of publication to a worldwide stage - this for kids can be incredibly empowering and motivating. I’d far rather write a short story for a few anonymous readers than merely ofr my teacher, but maybe that’s just me as a learner. I suppose if we are catering for the different learning styles of our learners, then this would be an option for us in the classroom?
“they are the easiest way to suck goodness out of the web with minimal investment”
I’ve almost certainly commented too quickly and without enough thought here, and your post kicks me into touch. Forums can be really useful - I run one for LTS which has been really successful for teachers looking for new ideas and to talk ideas through.
What I had in mind, though, with this statement were the majority of forums I had used on TESS which I found destructive and demotivating *because of* their anonymity. These are some of the forums Andrew was alluding to in his original post, to put things in context.
Now, though, I will spend a little more time to put my thoughts together on the pros and cons of good and bad forums and blogs. It might take some time, so forgive me for any delay, but I’ll bang it top of the list.
Please don’t give up blogging your thoughts - they’re highly useful for a wide range of people. Myself included!
There might also be some more background explaining my thoughts here:
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/01/can_the_last_pe.html
and here:
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/01/collective_dumb.html
Thanks Ewan, for your comment and for contributing to my blogling, which already seems to be finding its feet in a satisfactory way, though its bottom still sometimes hits the floor with a bump.Or is that me?
I’d already read the “last person change the record post” and picked up on your frustration within it. I understand how hard it must be when you can see the potential of a thing but can’t get the action going.
I was also interested in the collective dumbness one, and followed the link to the article by Kathy. Very interesting, I’ll put a post about that when I’ve mulled it over a bit.
Re forums, in an educational context, I read and contribute anonymously (for the reasons I explained in Andrews blog) to the TESS forum and more recognisably as dc13, to the LTS forums on Assessment and ACE, I also gizz up the GTCS Chartered Teacher one from time to time. There’s a lot of rubbish on the TESS, but at the same time, some of the ideas on these forums have enriched my teaching, and I hope I have also contributed to the teaching of others through them. Well, why be coy? I know I have, cos they’ve said so. I’ve some things to say about the LTS forums too, which I’ll add to my post later.
And thanks also to Chris and Andrew for your kind encouragement. Much appreciated. I’ll not give it up yet then….
Thanks, and I’ll be fascinated to see your ideas about the LTS forums. I run the MFLE one which has been one of the most popular and busy, but it’s how the forums are managed that leads to busy or not-so-busy activity and which also determines how constructive the contributions are.
I’ve found over the past 3 years that blogs have consistently provided more constructive conversations than forums. My reasoning for this includes the fact that each blog belongs to someone who directs a quality debate and moves the conversation on by writing more up-to-date posts. In forums, the conversations tend to stick around the initial subject with lots of “I agree” or “That’s not rights” (which is what AB alluded to in his original post).
That is what I was trying to dig at in my comments.
Most of the helpful stuff in the forums tends to be, for me, links, lesson ideas and practical stuff. If I want to have a debate about something topical I find blogs tend to tackle the subject with more care.
Just my tuppence worth.