Source: http://supersmallgallery.com/London/gorging.jpg

PjHiggins (Chalkdust 101) asserts the following:

There shouldn’t be any educational technology conferences anymore.

And, regrettably, I find myself agreeing with him. We’ve moved from sharing new technologies that are available to how to convince the mainstream educators that they should use them. It is a disappointing venture to convince folks…as Benjamin Disraeli once said, “A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”

How many people have you convinced that technology is the way only to find out their opinion really hasn’t changed? In fact, isn’t a traditional conference to match faces to Twitter handles?

A community of followers or readers is a powerful learning tool. It’s the reason why some of us in the blogosphere continue to blog. We have a community of people that we feel obligated to blog for. Whether true or not, there is a sense of obligation to people who have bookmarked your site or have your RSS feed. Audience as Community allows you to engage that audience into becoming what Dean calls an “Audience of Co-Learners“, or an “Audience of Teachers“. I believe before you can have either of those audiences you need to have an audience as community. Only after you have turned your audience into a community can you make something of them, empower them to help you, to teach you, to learn with you.
Source: Audience as Community

Jeff Utecht shares the above point, summarizing some of the ongoing conversations regarding community of co-learners. Essentially, isn’t this what a variety of social media tools–Twitter and Facebook–allow us to do, to more closely engage with each other in ways that go beyond the reflective writings shared in a blog? But what if some don’t want to engage more closely? What if the blog is THE publishing engine for their internal thoughts, the reflective dialogue of a mind trying to learn, to find empowerment?

As a blogger, I find that I’m thrilled to be sharing with 2000+ people on a daily basis. But is such a thrill unseemly? Couldn’t this be the same reaction we have to someone who craves the spotlight?

I’m not sure if I want to make something my audience…I’m grateful that people are reading, that they deign to comment and share what they’ve learned back with me (when they do). But I often feel that things are moving so quickly that neither the blogger or the commenter can keep up. We are caught up in swiftly moving streams of thought that take us in a variety of directions.

Ed Tech Conferences, as unnecessary as they are, remind me to slow down and interact with others one at a time…I recently found myself writing in a paper notebook, eschewing the technology…somehow, slowing down by writing in a notebook helped me process the information.

As Dean Shareski pointed out today in a tweet to Will Richardson…

Stop gorging yourself on information…..slow learning is good too. 😉

Has our edublogging culture suddenly made gorging desirable? Just because we can connect in infinite ways to each other, should we?

Subscribe to Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org

Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure