Gaming and blogs, oh my oh my!
That's pretty much my reaction to last week's class. I know we talked about transfer in there somewhere, but everything I remember was our discussion of gaming and blogs. And on both issues, I'm really not sure "what I think" at all.
When it comes to gaming, I'm just really skeptical at the whole paradigm that suggests people will be more motivated to do things that encourage learning or solve problems if we turn everything into a game, or cast real-world situations in the form of games. In formal educational settings, attempts at "gamifying" probably still usually come across as "Oh, they're trying to turn this into a 'game' so that it's 'fun' to learn. But this is nothing like [insert favorite video game here]." I suppose the issue of motivation is really what gets to me. We talked about how educators don't understand why students don't display skills in the classroom or in their academic work that they clearly display when gaming. My answer is that it's simply because they're in the classroom/doing academic work and they know it. That alone is a motivation-killer. I don't really know how to deal with this, but to me it's the biggest hurdle to getting "gaming" approaches to work in formal educational settings. I don't know about other gaming that aims to solve "real-world" problems; this is probably a little more complicated.
And oh, the blogs. One of the things I really wanted to learn in this class was how to do a professional blog and not come off as narcissistic or obsessed with your own ideas. I read a lot of blogs, some more regularly than others, and I always find them illuminating. But I'm not the kind of person who feels the need to broadcast my ideas about particular topics to the Internet at large, because I think it gives off the attitude that I'm a super-special snowflake who everyone should listen to. This is the same reason I don't post Facebook statuses or links very much (though I spend hours on Facebook every day); why would so many people be interested in mundane things I have to say?
But at the same time I know that in our profession and many others, blogs have come to play a vital and important role in professional discourse. And I know that when you're blogging as part of your job, the potential for the impression of narcissism is going to go down quite a bit. Nevertheless, given all this the part of our discussion on blogs I found most interesting was the discussion at the end of class on blogging culture and "blogging superstars" and such. That's exactly the kind of behavior that annoys me and turns me off of some blogs. I have no desire to be involved in petty professional drama that arises from who's "famous" on the Internet, though I guess some of that is inevitable these days.
But the thing that I learned from looking at so many professional blogs (and I looked at several others from the list than the ones I'd been following, though not in as much depth) was that the most significant thing a blog post can do is try to be part of a larger conversation. The best professional blog posts were those that took something personal and tied it in to larger trends, and then asked questions that generated further thought. The best bloggers don't just throw out random ideas and "here's what I'm doing" sort of moments-- they think about how to connect things to the larger context of the profession and really want to get feedback and provide more in return. Whether that actually happens is another question, because not all the blogs I looked at had a lot of comments, though that's not a great measure of how widely they were read. Overall, I guess the point is that blogs should be part of a larger conversation, not voices that dominate a conversation. Given the ubiquity and power of the Internet, though, this can be a tough line to walk sometimes, and it's something I think bloggers should keep in mind.
(Hope I haven't said anything that's offended all the blog-lovers out there! I like blogs too, I promise!)
I think you hit some points dead on about the bloggers we discussed and you point about personalizing and tying it to the larger professional issues of libraries and archives. I think that we as humans whether we want to admit it are not are sentimental people and it is easier for us to relate to what another human being is going through rather than just listening to experts. The great point about blogs is that we can interact with them(providing the "famous" author reads the comments) and be part of that conversation you talk about.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the potential for interaction is really the best part about blogs. When that's what you emphasize, and when you blog in a way that actively promotes interaction, you're doing things right.
DeleteDear Super Special Snowflake,
ReplyDeleteI also read lots of blogs and rarely comment for the same reasons that you do. I think though, in the context of professionalism, there is a lot to be said for a blog being a space where you can do your thinking out loud, whether or not anyone is listening.
Outside of public librarians' blogs, which do tend to rile up more comments, I, too, notice that commenting is generally not common to blogs. Sometimes, Topsy helps us know who is linking to blog posts, which can be illuminating. In my case, I almost never get comments. When I do, they are a) rarely on the post I anticipated would be talked about and b) often face-to-face instead. It's very tricky to measure the impact of blogs. However, it's relatively easy to measure our internal sense of whether being a blogger impacts us as professionals.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to your comments about not feeling comfortable broadcasting your ideas into the abyss-- that's why I'm not super excited about joining Twitter this semester... But at the same time, contribution is becoming the new standard for learning. There is this sense that if you can't add to the discussion, then what have you learned? And in that way, I agree with what you and Andrew were getting at in previous comments-- the potential for interaction and discussion is what makes these forums important.
ReplyDelete