Over the last week I've learned that I enjoy web 2.0, but only when I want to enjoy it. While I have enjoyed reading everyones' posts on the discussion board and electronic journals, I've found myself treading water in a sea of information with a wine cork sized floatation device. I have too much to keep up with to respond in any kind of thoughtful and personal fashion to more than just a few classmates.
Shirky talks about the effects of stardom on social networking. While none of us are stars in the Hollywood sense, we've all just added about 30 new contacts to our social networks. In Shirky terms, we've likely reached the point in this class where one-to-one contact is unlikely without ignoring a large section of the class members. Because interaction and participation is part of our grade, trying to interact with a small group of classmates may end up hurting the final grade.
Perhaps after next week I'll be more comfortable with following more than 25 new electronic journals, many hundreds of discussion board posts, and reading the text for the class. Looks like I'll be putting most of my personal social networking and reading on hold for the next five weeks.
While writing this I typed "Social Networking Overload" into Google and it produced over 1 million hits. If I'm already overloaded, how could I possibly have time to navigate over a million entries on social networking overload? Just for fun, I randomly clicked on one of the links, finding an educator complaining about social networking for the older crowd who isn't used to social networking. At the end of her post there was a link that said, "Want to know more? Subscribe to my RSS feed". I'm done laughing at the irony now, so I'll sign off.
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That's really funny about your search for social networking overload.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I just wanted to reiterate (I know I've posted this to Bb in a few places) that you don't need to follow every discussion, every journal, etc. in this class. It would be overwhelming to do so (I know, because I do have to follow them all). My desire for the students is that you all be active participants and somewhat independent learners, following the threads/elements that are useful and/or interesting to each of you personally. Hope this helps at least somewhat mute the overload.
"In Shirky terms, we've likely reached the point in this class where one-to-one contact is unlikely without ignoring a large section of the class members"
ReplyDeleteSo, we're all STARS! Welcome to our 6 weeks of FAME!
--Barbara