Today I spent some time setting up Bloglines and feeding into fellow OWPers’ blogs. I read most of what everyone’s posted in the past 3 weeks, but it somehow seems inappropriate or awkward to post comments now. Seems where I’m at, most have moved forward, and to comment now would be taking the discussion backwards. And that would be the first impression that others OWPers have of me…not good.

One of the most important prerequisites for reflection is time, and with a little more time between my first post and this one, I had this thought about opening all these sites–Flickr, 43 everything, Bloglines (which I’m still figuring out how to make public), Community Walk, etc. How much of myself am I putting out there on the web? I’ve put photos and blogged about my personal life before, but mostly to keep family and friends up-to-date while living/working overseas. Now I’m putting myself–personal and professional thoughts–on Front Street without knowing who is reading/knowing about me (partly because I have yet gotten to know fellow OWPers). It’s exciting thinking about which parts of me to reveal but of course also a little scary.

I don’t think students have this fear as much. In fact, when I used blogs last semester with my students, many of them willingly and instantly had photos up on their sites, even before they did any of the writing I asked them to do. And when the writing started, boy did students reveal personal stuff! I remember one student, when asked to write about an experience that impacted her deepy, blogged about her secret romance that has remained secret (from her boyfriend) to this day.

But open is not necessarily participatory, and one of the things I’d like to work on in the coming semester is nurturing some of the skills mentioned in Christopher Sessum’s Skills for 21st Century Learners: Preparing ourselves for participatory culture within my classes. Because much of my previous experience was with a traditional LMS, WebCT, in which the interactions I had with students were very didactic, I neglected to consider the aspects of play and networking possible with an environment that is more open and participatory. Some of my students were quite social on their own, and as they left comments at their classmates’ sites, others followed their lead and the ball got rolling that way, but what can I do to promote that?

One thing I know is that for the coming semester, I’ll have a whole bunch of new resources and skills at my disposal as a result of this EVO–and I will definitely send my students to check out some of the student blogs at Orchard as a starting point for a discussion: what makes a blog attractive and interesting to readers?

Seriously, in my rush to get caught up with the rest of the EVO group, I’ve only had a chance to skim through all of what 43Things/Places/People, Community Walk, Suprglu, Bloglines, Flickr, and WordPress can do…but I’m EXCITED!!! Especially with 43 places and Community Walk. So far, those two look to be most fascinating to a wanderer like me. I can’t wait to set up my places and maps as soon as this Jan 31 deadline passes.

I’ve never heard of WordPress as a blog server, so I’m looking forward to seeing what features it offers. Looking forward to experimenting with Bloglines…been meaning to and putting off setting up feeds…they make surfing so efficient. Suprglu seemed to have functions that overlapped with other sites, but let’s see what it can do. It was also the site that took the longest to get set up…where did I read that web surfers have the attention span of a grasshopper? True indeed. Must remember that when I blog, and when I give students stimulus & instructions online…