The Blogsphere: A New Discourse Community

I run this blog for two main purposes. One is to become part of the blogsphere and learn more about this new discourse community by joining it. My second, and perhaps dominant purpose, is to have a content thread to follow while allowing my teacher persona to play; I hope to connect readers to the wonderful tools and possiblities being created on the Web. (Sometimes called the Social Web, sometimes the Read/Write Web, or the Web 2.0 - these at least overlap even if the names are not completely synonyms.)

This is a leadin to my excitement at appearing in other blogs! It is also a report on how the blogsphere has worked, making connections with/and for me.

Konrad Glogowski, in his Blog of Proximal Development, referenced my College Quarterly article on Teaching Writing in the Age of Online Computers and linked to my Elgg weblog. I wasn't aware of this when I received an email with some very nice feedback on my article from Gardner Campbell. He mentioned Konrad's blog. I already had it on my Bloglines account, so I went immediately to it and read Konrad's post.

I found his discussion of "nodes", his references to Prensky's term “legacy content” and to Siemen's connectivism to be fascinating, and a fruitful extension of what I have been thinking about. Then I recognized Gardner Campbell's name, and followed Konrad's link to his blog - Gardner Writes, and I discovered that he had referenced and quoted my article!

I have, of course, added him to my Bloglines, and I continue monitoring and responding to these conversations that feed and extend my interests. I am part of this small corner of the blogsphere!

tags
Discourse Community
blogsphere
connectivism