Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Week Six - Reviewing the Experience

We decided to meet one final time to debrief the whole experience of the blogging group and to reflect on what worked and what didn't. Each participant is going to blog about their ideas during the week, and we'll spend the afternoon sharing our thoughts.

1 comment:

mommy besieged said...

I'm going to post a few of my thoughts here in the comments section...
I was very hopeful about this project at the beginning and I have really enjoyed spending time with the other bloggers. I think everyone is leaving with a good intro to the blogosphere and a blog
of their own, so that's great. The small number of participants (only two in the end) made it challenging to get a real group dynamic going, and I think that may have impacted people's motivation and enjoyment of blogging. If there are more posts to look at every week and people are commenting on each other's writing, a momentum is created. I believe that the positive energy and feeling of community that could ultimately build would stimulate folks to keep going. Our original plan of asking folks to do "homework" around seeking out other blogs, making comments and posting between sessions seemed to hit some roadblocks. It would be good to explore that further, but from what I've heard thus far, technical issues, time/energy, and simply not knowing what to write about may have been factors. Recommendations:
-5-8 participants in the group
-in the "homework," give specific questions for people to address in at least one post, to get people over the "what to write" dilemma
-give more specific and limited instructions in terms of seeking out other blogs, perhaps help folks seek out links during the group and post them on their site for further review during the week
-continue to give lots of time during the group for people to write a post, with assistance if needed
-once people have made it through the intro, continue to have weekly meetings where people can work on posts together.