Jess’ E-Learning Blog

Just letting you know that I’ve moved some of my posts into different categories, and rearranged some of my categories and sub-categories. It was disorganised, I had some technology types in ‘elesning experiences’ and I was categorising posts from ‘elearning design’ under the technology types. And reflections from this year and last year, all under last year’s subject name

So, now I have reflections for each subject, and bits and pieces relevant to only one class under that class name. All the rest of my categories are out on their own, lonely I think it’s easier that way, even if there are more general categories and less sub-categories.

One question though: Is is bad Netiquette to reorganise like this?

Suemin and I have had a short online discussion about the benefits and negatives of virtual worlds for learning in organisations… I just posted one more comment about it

But I’ve realised that we’ve been using blogging as a tool for learning, which had me really excited. Reading over our comments, I realised that we’ve created and published much more information than what was there when Suemin blogged the first time. Reading Suemins reply, I reflected and thought of some more ideas on the subject.

I think that this is really fantastic because it shows that blogging can be used to develop knowledge through dialogue between individuals. It is a very different way of developing knowledge from traditional face-to-face methods. Learning in this way is very organic, unstructured and directed only by the individuals who are engaging in the dialogue. I find this type of learning very intriguing and freeing.

^_^ VICTORIA ^_^

In answer to your interest in the group assignment about our ‘blogging for learning’ companies all being IT companies… some IT companies don’t like it when their employees blog. According to Zawodny, an employee at Google was actually fired in 2005 – mere weeks after he was employed – because he was blogging about his work at the organisation.

Also, there are companies who are not in IT who use blogging as well. For instance, General Motors have blogs for each area of their products. While this is a purely corporate blog and therefore has less learning capability for the organisation, it is an excellent PR tool and can be applied as a learning tool for customers.

However, I think that in general, an IT company would be more open to using e-learning tools because they would have a greater understanding of and appreciation for technology.

I have an assignment group assignment due for my e-learning subject and our topic is the use of blogging in organisations, preferably in terms of learning and disseminating knowledge. As I was researching, I came across a post on Steve Rubel’s blog concerning top-down and bottom-up blogging in organisations. There were two articles in the trackback (a list of people who had referenced the article in their blog) for his post which interested me.

The first trackback made a comment that a problem with blogging for organisation is the ‘public image’ of blogging is so light and fluffy that it would undermine the integrity of the organisation to invest in it. This is a valid point that I have thought about. Even writing a blog for the sole purpose of education, I still find myself falling into slang, informality and ’storytelling’, all of which aren’t very professional or academic. How easy would it be for a blogging tool to encourage informality and outright bluntness as a part of the organisational culture?

Of course, I’m thinking of a large, bureaucratic organisation here, one who probably wouldn’t take a risk on something like blogging. However, a smaller, more creative, team-based or matrix organisation might make desire a more informal, networked culture and use blogging as a platform to build it. In which case, posting biscuit recipes for staff morning teas may not be such a bad idea.

The second track caught my eye purely because of the word ‘wikis’. It only interested me because I was not expecting it in a post concerning blogs. However, it started me thinking: wikis may produce similar results to blogging in organisations. While wikis encourage teamwork and learning through many individuals contributing to one page – which is a considerable bonus point in favour of wikis – could this interaction bring about a change in organisational culture? Is it because blogs are an electronic medium, processed and stored on the internet, which allows for the informality – and sometimes irrelevance - of the content? If that is so, then wikis could also have the same effect being that they are an electronic tool, used to create and disseminate knowledge throughout a group of people, much in the same way as blogs.

My groupwork assignment is based around the use of blogging as a tool for learning and disseminating information in organisations. While there is a lot of information on blogging and use uses of blogging in education, my group has found very few organisations which use it in the workplace, either formally or informally. Given that our course is using blogging as a tool for learning (both to familiarise the class members with technologies and also to share and search for knowledge) I would not have thought it such a stretch for organisations to implement blogging, even if it is used purely as a tool to connect the organisation and promote the organisations culture.