Oh blogs, how can I use thee? Let me count the ways. (Blogs Task)

Ok, I admit that is a pretty poor attempt at poetic license (my apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning) but at times I guess I do go all gushy over the lovely goodness that is the internet. Blogs? Well yeah I do love them. They are such a versatile, useful tool.

I have eight Blogger blogs that I contribute to as an author and they all have different uses and agendas. I also have a couple of Wordpress blogs, a Squidoo and probably some other incarnations as well so I thought I would attack this task by auditing the blogs I currently have and discussing their main aim, their effectiveness in acheiving that aim, and assessing their future.

1. This blog (Learning Journey 4 Net11) has it's main purpose as an assessment method for a unit of study at OUA. Hopefully it will be effective in acheiving that aim...I guess my marks will be the indicator there. I imagine that the blog will lie dormant on completion of the unit but it will always be a record of my learning and part of my e-portfolio.
2. e-learning-central.blogspot.com This is my professional blog. I created it as a way to share the things I learn and experience connected with e-learning. Though it has not had a huge readership it has served it's purpose over the last year and I have received some great comments and feedback from it. I have been thinking about mothballing it though because I think there are so many other people doing similar things and often better.
3. CEDAR-project.blogspot.com I createed this blog as a means of communicating to the world the progress of an e-learning project that I was managing last year. I was very happy with the appearance and theme of this blog but I think it was never very successful in getting the message out about
4. My workplace has a blog on Blogger too which is private and only invited people can contribute to it. It has over 450 posts on it all to do with staff updating other staff on their movements and acheived goals. I really think this blog is underutilised and I have often told the rest of the staff the same. The posts are ususally responded to with things like "read" or "thanks" and I find this idea to be such a waste of time. Why bother putting anything if you can't contribute to the discussion? I attempted at one stage to get everyone to drop the blog and move to Ning but we soon moved back to the old blogger. Ning was just too out there for them :(
5. My first blog (be warned if you click the link you get my voki telling you all about it) was put together as part of a Learnscope Mini Project. It was my original learning and playing environment for blogs. This is what got me into blogging in the first place. I got so many real life complimentary comments about this and it really helped to launch my e-learning career. I haven't posted to it for ever and probably never will again as the project is long finished, but it will always be the original "rhysatwork" installation.
6. I created this wordpress blog and this Squidoo Lens as part of an experiment in boosting the "google juice" of an e-learning course. The idea was to harness the power of web2.0 to jetison an online Responsible Service of alcohol course to Page One on Google. It proved to be so effective that I sold ten courses on the first day. I blogged about it here. I plan on duplicating and enhancing the process with future courses and products.
7. My boss set up a couple of private Blogger blogs for use by students but they have not been embraced for reasons yet to be clarilied. I think this use is great (after all isn't that what this Learning Journey 4 Net 11 blog is all about?) but you really need to encourage the students and nurture them through the teething stages.
8. I am in the process of setting up a self hosted wordpress installation for the purpose of keeping our clients informed about the current business, new courses and other tidbits at my workplace. I went through the installation process some time ago and it has just been left in limbo since then. I have been getting a steady stream of spam comments posted to it though. I'm not sure what benefit these spammers think they are getting by posting to such an empty blog though.....
9. Finally I have been using the blog on my ning network to start to gather my e-portfolio together. I am not sure if this will prove to be the best platform for this use for blogging but I guess I can try it out and see how it goes.

There, my blogging audit is complete. I hope this meets the needs of the Blog Task in module 3 because I really need to get my bum into gear with my concepts assignment.......

Chat me up baby... Module2 Chat Task

I have been using chat for a long time but I have really found the benefits of it greatly expand for me over the past few years with it's work uses. Here is a summary of the chat tools I use often and the applications I employ with them:

• Skype is definitely the best thing since sliced bread for me. It makes my job a lot easier and certainly more flexible because I have the ability to work from home and communicate with my colleagues and boss cheaply and quickly. I do use it for personal chats with friends but not nearly as often now as I used to. The video and voice options I tend to reserve for use with family and friends because I really have no need to see my colleagues in the office and most of the time they don't have speakers, camera or microphone. I did a chat with a few folks from net11 on chat and found that we mainly had small talk. One thing I find annoying with all types of synchronous text chat is the long pauses caused by folks writing long chat messages with two finger typing.... ARRRRGH. (fortunately, this was not something I experienced with the chat I had with net11 folks)

• Facebook has a chat function which I use for catching up with friends and often e-learning colleagues as well. It is usually a ten minute quick chat. The functionality of the facebook chat is limited; I am yet to find a way to include multiple chat members; people who are offline often appear online and vice versa; messages often take a long time to come through. This article about other uses of facebook chat has given me some ideas and I guess I probably am not using it to it's full potential.

• Ning has the ability to put a chat function in it but to be honest, I think it is pretty rubbish. There doesn't seem to be any audible indication of an incoming message and chats seem to stay there for days... in hindsight I might take it away from the ning I have set up. This forum discussion on a ning website I am a part of reflects some of the problems I have experienced in the past with ning chat.

• Twitter, though not a synchronous communication chat method as such, has proved to be a very good way for me to have "chats". Though you often have to wait for a long time (maybe a whole day) the responses you get seem to be measured (usually) and thoughtful because they are public record (if you use the @reply as opposed to the DM direct message). For me the fantastic opportunity that you get with twitter which you don't with many other methods is the access to contemporaries all around the world who you otherwise would never have had access to. I have managed to have a few impromptu quick twitter chats with some of the net11 folks and these have added to the connections we have experienced in the forums.

I know these chat methods are probably not the most popular or even the most effective but they are the ones that I use and those are my reflections on them. Should I try something else? well I have used MSN, ICQ and others in the past but this is what I currently play with.I have found that the asynchronous discussions occurring in the webct forums, on blogs and other web2.0 tools to be more akin to my optimum communication style.... but I like to play with all sorts of stuff so I reckon I will be playing with another tool that is bigger and better at some stage down the track and I'll let you know how that goes too ;)