Is it Sharing If You Make Me?....A Blogging Caution

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Ok, so here’s something that has been bugging me for a while. The truth is I hate blogging. I don’t really feel the need to put my thoughts out there for the whole world to read. I feel like I’m pontificating. In class, I often just feel obligated to take a stand...any stand...no matter how strongly (or not) I feel about something. I like FINDING interesting blogs, but I have to say there are an awful lot of bad ones out there too. (Sort of puts a new twist on the old adage “Sit on Your Tongue”…How about “Sit on Your Keyboard”?!?)

Social networking and blogging are consistent with the many benefits and outcomes associated with virtual learning spaces such as maximizing collaboration, access to anytime anywhere information, and customized education where students focus on their own interests. . In “Compulsory Participation in Online Discussions: Is This Constructivism or Normalisation of Learning (2008) Gulati, discusses how online educators and theorists have identified the Constructivist position as necessary for developing learner centred strategies” (p184). Consistent with Constructivist philosophy in http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blended_Learning_in_K-12 the authors discuss the numerous instructional benefits of blogging. Among the numerous listed “The presence of an audience can increase engagement and can also improve student writing”, while forcing “students to become more savvy about the world around them…Blogging is a tool that inspires collaboration and encourages student to extend learning well beyond the traditional day.” (p. 36)

There is a danger here though that we need to pay attention to. Not all learners are comfortable with an audience and not everyone wants a permanent record of their thoughts forever floating around cyberspace. Gulati goes on to ask the questions:

• “Does emphasis on participation in online discussion really allow learner individual decentralisation of learning, or does it just lead to increased conformity to tutor-defined processes?
• Do online learning spaces facilitate openness and trust to ask questions and challenge others?
• Are there power influences in online learning spaces that benefit some and not others?”

pp 184-185

The author goes on to quote Stephen Brookfield who warns that “enforced or coerced participation may result in learners either being increasingly physically or mentally absent and disengaged learners who may fail to acknowledge new ideas, skills and knowledge” (pp 184-185)

Another concern regarding the imposed use of social network sites and public blogs is what Jared Stein (2008) refers to as “Creepy Treehouse”. Although there are many examples of how the term can apply, from an educational perspective Stein discusses “creepy treehouse as a situation where a professor requires his students to interact with him or her on a medium other than class tools. Although considered innovative, using tools that may already in use by the learners and their peers “may repulse some users who see [this]…as having potential for institutional violation of their privacy, liberty, ownership or creativity.”

While self educating communities collaborate freely on the internet, the same freedom to opt in and out, does not exist in a formal (albeit new age) virtual classroom. Nor does the option to “sit quietly” exist when the mood strikes.

So what does this say about me? I’m nothing if not consistent. The truth is I love Limewire for all the cool music I can have access to, but I hate thinking others are sniffing around in my computer. I want theirs but not sure I want them having mine. Maybe I’m just a contrarian. Maybe I’m really a cyber voyeur. Maybe I just don’t like sharing.

I’m pretty sure though that if you make me, it’s not sharing.

References:

Gulati, S. (2008). Compulsory Participation in Online Discussions: Is This Constructivism or Normalisation of Learning. Innovation in Education and Teaching International, 45-2(May), 183-192.

Scagnoli, N. & CTER Cohort 7, (n.d.). In Wikibooks. (chap. Blended Learning K-12). Retrieved September 25, 2010,  n.d., from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blended_Learning_in_K-12

Stein, J. (2008, Apr. 9). In Flexknowledgy. (chap. Defining Creepy Treehouse). Retrieved June 10, 2009, from http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/2008/04/09/defining-creepy-tree-house/