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Learning from an impromptu online community

By ASTDOffice | August 8, 2007

The 31 Day Blogging Challenge

Darren Rowse at Problogger issued a challenge. Every day in August 2007, he would publish a tip to improve your blog. Michele Martin at The Bamboo Project took him up on it, and invited her readers to join in. One of the primary topics Michele writes about is learning technologies, and she writes one of my favorite blogs, so I signed on to her group. There are 14 of us, all with some kind of education focus, from brand new to experienced bloggers. I’ve written a few posts on my blog about the first few days, and the rest of the first week.

It has been a fascinating learning process. Here we are a random group of people from Australia, India, UK and USA, connected by the fact that we author a wide variety of blogs and want to get better. We each read the assignment of the day, apply it to our blog(s), and periodically post what we learned from the process. We each approach the tasks differently, execute at the level that works for us individually, and share when we get a chance.

I’ve learned a lot, for example:

• Each time I read another persons account of what they did, it sparks a myriad of ideas I can apply. I especially like it when they talk about how they arrived to a particular conclusion– suddenly I get a glimpse into another learning process.
• Some of the challenges have involved commenting on other people’s blogs. It has reduced my fear of doing that. There are real people on the other side, and they really do appreciate the comments and want to connect with their readers. It has been fun to get emails from around the world as well as comments posted on the blogs.
• The basics of blogging are pretty easy, but it is really hard to be exceptional.
• If you start commenting and emailing multiple people, reading lots of blogs with posts with similar names, it gets confusing really quick. Suddenly, you need a new level of organization and ways to keep track of it all. Luckily the group contains a number of people who understand the technical tools that can help, and they write posts about them.
• It is really hard to improve two blogs and continue to develop and write new content at the same time. So, I may not post as much as I want to during this challenge. There is a lot more going on inside than is ready to be made public. My reflective side is really coming out with the speed at which this learning experience is occurring. It seems so simple, one small task a day, but each task seems to call into question a whole myriad of assumptions that led to previous decisions.

Can we apply this idea to organizational learning?

One of the other participants, Tim Davies, wondered if we might apply this to organizational learning and change. I certainly think it could work and be quite successful. A few things I would keep in mind:

• It’s pretty intense. You need to make space for it. What would you stop doing to make room?
• We volunteered to participate. No one is making us do it. Individuals are designing their own engagement.
• Organization systems really help, especially as the tasks and learning accumulate.
• We are aligned under self generated common interests: blogging and education with a dose of technology thrown in.

I’m sure all sort more learning is coming from the rest of the month. I’ll keep you posted. If you have a blog, join in or follow along. It’s a great experience.

Here are the other people who are participating in the 31 Day Blogging Challenge:
Michele Martin, Alex Miller, Brent Mackinnon, Cammy Bean, Frances McLean, Kate Foy, Kate Quinn , Laura Whitehead, Nancy Riffer, Smoke Free Wisconsin , Sue Waters , Eklavya, Tim Davies

• 31 Day Comment Challenge
• New training blogs
• How Technology Transformed My Professional Development
• Mobile Learning
• How I use Google Reader

Topics: - Social Learning SIG |

8 Responses to “Learning from an impromptu online community”

1. Alex Miller Says:
   August 9th, 2007 at 12:34 am

   I have really got a lot from this challenge so far and it has really been worth the time. I have been networking with some great people with like minds and networking with them in Twitter at the same time. What a great opportunity to share.

   Your point about “commenting and emailing multiple people, reading lots of blogs with posts with similar names, it gets confusing really quick. Suddenly, you need a new level of organization”. Is oh so true!

   I just love netvibes as a tool for this. I have added RSS feeds for many of the blogs I read (particularly as part of this challenge) to my netvibes page. This way and I can easily check for new posts on all of the blogs at once. Have a look;

   http://www.screencast.com/t/o2dypTvgWQr

2. Michele Martin Says:
   August 9th, 2007 at 3:24 am

   Hi Christine–I was really intrigued by Tim’s idea and think that it does have potential, although your point on the voluntary nature of our project is certainly well-taken.

   I still think that if handled correctly, a lot of excitement and learning could be generated around approaching a training in this way. For example, I’d love to (and think I might) do something like 7 Days toward Becoming a Better Learner (or 14 days maybe). Or X days toward improving your Writing Skills or your Networking Skills or whatever. I think that there are a lot of possibilities and that people could sort of latch into what interested them.

   I don’t think this format would work as well for more technical training (although it might). I think it would work great, though, for more general professional development and for culture-building.

   Anyway–great post and as I’ve told you before, I’m impressed with how you’re doing this for TWO blogs, rather than just one. Glad to see that it has your reflective juices flowing. It’s certainly done that for me!

3. Christine Martell Says:
   August 9th, 2007 at 6:56 am

   WOW, Alex. I love the screencast you made for us! And I adore your accent Michelle has mentioned Netvibes before, but there is nothing like SEEING it, especially full of real life content.

   What a great use of a screencast for learning. It’s like sitting next to you watching. Great just in time learning. You heard my need, and met it. So many ways to apply this concept for trainers.

   I will be setting up a Netvibes space and making the time to learn how to do the screencasts. I’ll even try twitter one of these days soon. Maybe I’ll figure out what to do with my Facebook account?

   _______________________________________________________________

   Michele,
   Love to keep generating ideas for topics and testing them out. How about 7 days to more effective emails?

   I’m thinking the big key is to have people apply the challenge to something they are invested in. So even with technical training, if you were working on making your real Word documents look better, and had a reason/desire it could work.

   I participate in a LOT of training, both as a learner and facilitator. Rarely do I find myself engaging as fully as I am in this challenge. As a developer, I am thinking deeply about this. I know one of the keys to the visual tools I create is people get to engage on their own terms. I am looking at how I can deepen that aspect of the experience.

4. Kate Quinn Says:
   August 9th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

   I too am finding that much more inward reflection is occuring through this project than may be outwardly shown. I have been amazed at how much time it takes to read and reflect before writing about it. I’m taking this challenge slower than most just so I can have time to think about what has been raised.

   I too love Alex’s Netvibes demonstration. I’ve never found a feed reader that really suits me so I usually just visit each person’s page - but its really easy to miss out on good posts. I think I will be trying this out later, and will have to blog my experience!

5. Michele Martin Says:
   August 10th, 2007 at 4:13 am

   I agree with all of you that the reflection component of this has been really powerful. It’s the piece of learning that I find is most neglected in training. Yet for me, it’s the most valuable and one of the main reasons I love blogging so much.

   And Alex–your Netvibes screencast is GREAT! I just posted on it so that Bamboo Project readers could check it out. Thanks for sharing!

6. 31 day blogging challenge: Days 7 - 10 at VisualsSpeak Says:
   August 10th, 2007 at 10:18 am

   [...] 31 day challenge continues. I wrote a reflection post on BlogCascadia the other day. Another aspect of this process I have noticed, is the group is starting to teach [...]

7. Sarah, diploma graduate Says:
   August 31st, 2007 at 12:54 pm

   Blogging helped to develop reflection and improve writing skills… The more posts you write, the better they usually are. You get your own style, and, from a psychological point of view, you realize that you are unique, and you are on a higher level in terms of personal growth.

8. How I use Google Reader | BlogCascadia Says:
   September 30th, 2007 at 7:31 pm

   [...] personal connection with the blogger. Then they go into a special category; right now it is labeled bb31days after the project that helped me learn to connect through [...]

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