there’s a great discussion of personal versus group blogging going around. aaron nelson gives a good overview in his post teacher in development :: blogging: personal vs. group. as the editor/blogmeister of a team blog - in fact, one of

On Group blogging, Graham I think I’m in the same boat as you. I think the group of teachers I work with have not “gotten” the whole blog paradigm yet. They are largely digital immigrants, and “to blog” is still very much a foreign concept. I really like how you ended your comment. I think that is one of our missions, to work hard at being updated ourselves, and inviting and modeling others to hop on the bus too.

Will…I’m still there too. The thinking it all through. You capture it well when you say that it’s like feeling torn when you go to write in someone else’s space. Yep. It’s just not the same. You don’t feel at home, you can’t explore where you want to explore…you just have to stay seated on the seat the host showed you to (most of the time anyway.) There’s just something limiting about group blogs, at least in the ones I have been involved in. Are those limits bad things? No. I don’t think so. I think if the host is good, the conversation can be great. It’s just getting to the point of being a great host and helping the guests “feel more at home.” That’s where I am seeing my focus moving…just over these last few days as I’ve thought all this stuff through. It’s about making your guests feel at home. It’s about helping your guests feel at ease with their surroundings (blogging) and showing them…modeling…how to do it.

Still thinking…

Daniel,
Great comment. I was thinking about it yesterday…and this silly word problem came to my mind: If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody is there to hear it, did it make a sound?

While we know it did, the idea of it is pretty relevant to your comment I think. Professional development should never be a solitary pursuit. We learn best from seeing what others do. We grow the tallest when we stand on the shoulders of someone else.

I think a group blog could grow into something like this, but I think a better application of a blogfolio is doing what you’ve started doing. Blog away on yours, and start exploring the blogs of others…commenting, participating in the conversation, blogging about what they blog on - thinking about what they had to say, reading deeper on the matter, reflecting, then putting your take on it…and then publishing to your blog (and trackback it to the firestarter.) That’s how conversations get started. By learning how to listen. Think. Express, and listen again. Never alone. Never in an echo chamber.

My two cents….

While owning a private plot of the blogosphere where I can build a home and entertain guests is certainly desireable,I’ve been essentially posting to an audience of one for a very long time. I’ve been finding my voice in an echo chamber and it’s gotten to be a bit lonely.

No, I’m not suggesting that a group blog is the answer. (I think I know the answer.)I guess I just want to warn folks away from being so in love with the blog of their own voice that they end up unread. Afterall, if we weren’t interested in having our posts read, we wouldn’t be putting our thoughts out there for the World (Wide Web)to see.

Aaron’s post, Blogging: Personal vs. Group on the status of his team blog being in limbo was a very interesting exploration. First of all, I’ve gotta say I love the verbage, “I fell through a post” ( Blogging: Personal vs. Gr…

So this is a perfect example of the types of changes we’re going to have to get used to (and perhaps teach?) in terms of reading the Read/Write Web.

Like you said, when humans are involved we’re dealing with a wide variety of variables and influences. That’s a great point. I think group blogging is a viable option, especially when you’re tring to work with a widely distributed group of people.

I guess what I need to take out of this is 1. Patience. I do need to remember that most of the teachers I work with are just meeting the blogsphere for the first time, and have heavy schedules to deal with.

It would be premature of me to give up, and I don’t want to do that.

Great things often take great amounts of time and effort to build…and professional development, is in my opinion, a great thing to work at.

It really is the people and how they connect - and if they aren’t connecting, then I need to really think about why.

Thanks again Alan.

Thanks for your followup comments and shared experiences. I would emphasize that this is my tiny limited experience, and I would never discount the possibility for a successful team blogging environment or space. I really do not want to see it suggested as a universal law.

There are many more factors at play, and anything with humans at the core have all kinds of external influences. But I never underestimate the role of motivation and the need for a critical mass of active players to make a shared space come alive.

For example, I’ve tried for a year and a half to get some distributed project teams to use a wiki, and their lack of use (some unfamilarity, some with a bad spammer experience), might lead a false conclusion of “wikis don’t work” and if the WikiPedia had stayed in the same realm of experience, it would not be the web darling it is.

It’s not the tools or the technology- its the people, what they do, how they connect (or not). Or maybe it is karma