Blogs = Complex Spaces

Over the few years that I've been blogging, I've seen the sites themselves and the software take giant steps forward. Blogs are no longer just about text. As people have demanded more functionality, they have become complex spaces bringing together information from many different places and services.

This was brought home to me last week when I arrived in Shanghai along with a few others (virtually of course) to help out with one of Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach's presentations. Chris Betcher from Australia put up a slide (which I captured using Jing, one of my new favourite little applications) on Elluminate that deconstructed one of blog posts. As the pictures shows, his blog aggregates information from many different places into a single Chris Betcher portal.

 

A blog is a complex space. A piece of text in its own right that is as complicated as a textbook of any kind. In fact, I believe it is much more complex as one blog may differ from another much more than one textbook from another. Combine this with the addition of hyperlinks taking readers on to other spaces and the level of reading comprehension needed to navigate a text like this rises dramatically.

As I become more convinced of the legitimacy of blogs as information sources and the staying, revolutionary power of participatory media, I also become more convinced of the need to teach students comprehension and navigation techniques just as we would with any other piece of text.

Comments

[Heather]

Clarence,

I've been taking the same attitude with my blogs sidebars as I have with my closet (the closet thing is recent). I don't add anything unless I get rid of something. I fear that if I didn't do this my blog would turn into a massive case of cognitive overload.

[Tonia Johnson]

Thanks for your insight over the past few months I've been considering that students need to be taught the language/vocabulary, navigation and reflection needed to digest and make their own meaning!
They need to understand how to use them as sources of information and insight.
Perhaps by putting blogs together in an aggregator, students can put the pieces together and make meaning by looking at multiple sources from multiple points of view...not just a textbook!
I think it pushes them into a higher level of thinking.

[Jon Sikora]

I know that as someone who is relatively new to blogging, I use an informal, intuitive approach to finding my way through a blog site. It seems that using some prescribed method would allow for both time saving and a higher information relay percentage. Is there such a method? It appears that middle school might be the proper place to teach such a method?