Frances Bell’s Blog

Canoe in Devil’s Kitchen

Originally uploaded by daveelmore

CCK09 is getting going now and I feel that it won’t be long before my boat ride with the  strong flow of the river showing up interesting events and resources turns into me clinging to the side of the barrel as I negotiate the rapids too overwhelmed to do anything but glance at tantalising images as I speed past them.  There is the Connectivism blog, the wiki, the Moodle, the Daily, the Twitter tag, the Ning, the Diigo, lots of blogs, google search, pageflake pages, etc., etc. It’s all too much!!!

So I am going to make a plan!

Which approach could I take?

1.  Organisation by agenda

I could follow the Weekly events and readings as posted in the wiki. This rather reminds me of the British Museum search algorithm remembered from my days working on machine learning.  Well, I am not a machine and I already read quite a few of the readings last year, so that approach is out.

2. Homophily/ my mates approach

I could just use my existing personal network on Twitter and blogs to talk to people I already know about connectivism.  That would be enjoyable but since I met many of my good connections through new interactions  on CCK08, I would be missing out on the opportunity to extend my personal network.

3. Tagging

I do tag stuff (for my own use) with CCK09 and connectivism in delicious and Twitter but look at the searches across everyone’s

http://delicious.com/tag/cck09

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=cck09

Huge lists - getting longer - all the time …..

4. Follow the Moodle using RSS

This was part of my strategy last year and did serve to keep me in touch, and find interesting new people (and one or two that I eventually tried to avoid).  I think it might be too repetitive and time-consuming so I’ll need to be more selective.

The plan

So I am just going to have to experiment with my own selective strategy that will combine:

• grazing the  wiki and occasionally contributing when I have something worthwhile (I did this for Week 2 resources today)
• blogging when the urge takes me with tag CCK09, and watching out for bloggers to follow
• seeking out those with a common interest (e.g. my own interest in links between connectivism, theories such as ANT and Activity Theory, and practice) and finding a way to aggregate our discussion
• ’spotting’ interesting people and following them to where they go
• using search, e.g. with multiple tags or terms, in ‘large’ spaces like connectivism Moodle, Twitter and the blogosphere and then participating selectively
• mimicking smart networkers

So what do the rest of you think? Any tips to add to above?