This blog has been so quite for so long – I haven’t even looked at the stats!  My only excuse is that 15 months ago I enrolled in a professional doctoral programme at University of Otago. The combination of completing 4 major assignments, and the ongoing work inbetween just left me with so little time to myself to do enjoyable things like creating blogging posts!

So I survived the first year, got the grades I was aiming for and rolled straight on into the second year with more classwork to refine our research topics…. I’ve got a topic, and a focus but more about that in a later post!

Just now I wanted to flag that I aim to get this blog up and running again come June. I’ve just started on a long break from my academic job – a combination of annual leave (7 weeks) and a 3 month sabbatical. The leave part is coming first… so from June onwards I hope to be back and actively blogging!

I’ve a few moments so have been tidying up my messy blog (doing my housekeeping).. There are so many more blogs now written by OT’s (upwards of 60 I’ve heard). I thought I’d showcase a new one that is just getting started  – its organised by postgraduate students as a way to keep on developing and buidling on knowledge gained from a postgraduate course called Language by Hand: Handwriting practices for children and young people

So check it out – its just a fledgling new blog but I’m sure is going to grow.

Now this is an interesting topic and came from this article by Sameer Vasta who had turned off his comment boxes for some time, then turned them back on with a discussion about whether a blog should have the comment option or not. The challenge for Day 9 was to read this article, and then consider the question “should we be using the commenting capacity to generate conversations between bloggers, or should we be interacting through our blog posts?”

The questions asked:

What, to your mind, is the purpose of comments on blogs?

I have enabled comments for several reasons… firstly I think its a ’safer’ way of sharing your ideas without feeling like you need to start a blog and maintain it. Comment boxes allow you to enter a conversation that you otherwise wouldn’t get to see or hear. As my goal is to encourage others in the profession to explore the use of Web 2.0 tools, I have to find ways to ’scaffold’ the learning experience – commenting on a blog is one step on the ladder to perhaps starting your own blog.. and it may be the only step on the ladder – but we need as many commenters as we need bloggers!

Another reason – I am by nature a person who enjoys discussion – I like to have the opportunity to put my ideas out there, but I’m also interested in what others believe, feel, think… about the same topic. If I didn’t enable comments, then I”d just be ’shouting out’ my ideas to the world… If I wanted to only ‘hear’ my voice, and to ‘read’ the voices of other likeminded people (choosing the blogs I want to read)… then I might as well shut up shop and stop blogging. If I want to muse aloud, I can do that anywhere and in any private forum or mechanism I choose… blogging for me is about engagement with others.. not just with your own ideas.

Another reason – I like to know that people have been challenged, moved, encouraged or in some way stimulated by my thoughts – perhaps others would call that needy – but my blog is not just about me and what I see as my world view… but also knowing that they message I am trying to convey to the profession is actually reaching someone (or more than someone)… so again a comment lets me know that!

So I guess I’m coming down very much on the side of commenting works for me in a blog… I know others may not agree… but that’s the other great thing about blogs – you create them to be what you want them to be and there’s no ‘rules’ as such!

So please comment! I’m off to check what Sarah thought about this but I can’t seem to get into her archived posts – I keep coming back to May’s postings – so Sarah – how good is your tracking system!

Day 8’s challenge was also interesting as I’m certainly guilty of homophily which is the term used to describe the behaviour where we engage primarily with people who think and believe as we do. So I followed the instructions and went to the Technorati Topic Directory. I started in some women focused blogs, but didn’t find any that had comments on.. or more than 1 or 2. What was good about this was that it made me feel better that many blogs don’t have avid readers/commenters – or rather commenters anyway! I sometimes think that we’re not doing well when I go to blogs such as Tony Karrer’s who has a heap of commenters!

I then decided to check out entrepenurial blogs – I was curious to see what entrepeneurs talked about and what comments they got. I had to go through about 2 or 3 before I found one with comments. the blog entry itself was quite long and I have to admit I lost interest and stopped reading – but clearly it was a thought provoking and useful post for those in the industry – with 25 comments made. A couple of people posted more than one comment, but most appeared to be responding to the blogger’s ideas..There didn’t appear to be huge amount of interaction with each other. But then the blogpost itself possibly didn’t provide provocative thoughts – instead it seemed to be someone’s ideas from their experience, so the commenters were either of the ‘me to’ ilk, or you’ve been looking over my shoulder, or you’ve given me something to think about! So good learning for creating blogposts that result in ongoing discussions – don’t write long posts that provide the key points (perhaps!).

A holiday potentially from blogging tomorrow and Friday as I fly up to Hamilton in the North Island for a Kairaranga Editorial Team/Board meeting – will be great to catch up with the whole board on Friday. I”m looking forward to feedback about two articles I’ve encouraged to be submitted – but I can’t say any more here as one is in the editorial process.. and the other has yet to be submitted for review. Both have come from discussions I’ve had with occupational therapists outside of NZ… so hopefully it will bring more of an international flavour to Kairaranga.  I must also start my next assignment for my EdD studies this weekend – the topic is about professional development, and our profession – basically setting the scene and exploring existing research in order to start to frame up my own research questions – so am looking forward to doing that – if I can only stop getting sidetracked by more ‘fun’ activities with my colleagues around the world!

I have for a long time watched enviously as educators really appeared to make the social networks afforded to them by social software work.  I bemoaned the fact that there weren’t enough OT’s online to make this workable, and commiserated with Sarah who finds the same with midwifery!

But… in the last few months, the numbers using the programmes have exploded, and slowly there appears to be slightly more even representation between academics/researchers, students and OT’s, although I think student numbers would still outstrip the rest of us!

The last 3 months I’ve seen the power that emerges from a group that starts to cluster together online – I’m talking about the group that formed within a few short days to submit the abstract to the COT conference that has just happened. The work this group did is described here in my blog.  It’s amazing the level of trust we gained through our work online, and we still have yet to all meet actually face to face.

Building on the success of this combined work, Natan and I grabbed the opportunity at the ‘nth’ hour to submit and abstract to the next American OT conference in Texas next year.  Using mainly gchat and one or two emails, we developed the abstract within I think about 36 hours. The rest of the group were able to view the final abstract after we had submitted it but were happy with the outcome. We will wait for a while to hear back… and we may not be successful, but its another example of what can be achieved through the tools.  And the group has more plans to use the tools to grow other’s understandings of occupational therapy – so please do watch this space (and that of Angela, Sarah, Will and Natan!).

found day 7’s task a good one to consider – what a nice little educational twist – stop and reflect on what you have learnt so far! I’ve been a commenter for a while – I found that in the early days when I wasn’t sure of what to write, that I would spend the time instead perusing other’s blogs and leaving comments so I’m not sure that I’ve gained a huge amount in the first six days of this challenge. However, what the tasks have done is to make me conscious of the quality of my comments.

The first task was useful as it got me back into the habit of visiting my blog daily and I do believe these social software programmes do need to become part of your daily or weekly routines. The importance of linking was highlighted for me in this task and this is something I have been trying to do in my own posts, and also in comments on others blogs. The second task to find a new blog to comment on was fun and led me to a new OT blog that is an excellent resource. Day 3 led me back to cocomment which I had signed up but had not ever properly used. I’m still finding it less than useful, in that you can track some posts but not others. The tracking function doesn’t appear to work on blogger.com (I could be wrong here)… and so I don’t get notifications of when someone has commented on my comments. I can see the value of such a programme, but perhaps either need to get back in touch with the cocomment people, or swop over to comment as Sarah has recommended. Days 4, 5 and 6 got lumped together but actually worked really nicely as a combined task as one led to the other – asking questions, disagreeing and also going back to continue the thread of a discussion are all tasks I normally do. I’m not sure I learnt much except that I could be more disciplined in checking back where I’ve left comments to see if a discussion is underway! More reason to find a commenting tracking service that works across all blogging programmes.

So Day 7 complete, and look forward to the next task for Day 8.

Okay okay I can’t even manage more than three days of completing a task a day!  I was all set to do this posting for day 4, and then I read about how our presentation had gone at the COT conference, and the responses on the Salford OT blog, and then those on mine and I just got all carried away with writing about that and lost the plot on the commenting challenge! But I’m back on track now and am going to try and do three tasks tonight!

So Day 4’s task is to ask a question in a blog comment. I don’t usually have a problem doing this, so it should be a quick task to tick off.  I’ve even found followed up the blogger who has started the challenge about the same time as me!  Mrs Banjer.

Brilliant – onto Day 5. This task is a little more challenging as you have to disagree with someone’s posting. For this one I’ve followed someone else doing the comment challenge to this blog on social conferencing (perhaps it was Sarah’s blog). Tony Karrer has a very detailed blog and raises some interesting issues.  I spent some time going around in circles reading his interlinked postings and trying to make sense of the comments. Many of the commentors appear to know each other and so the discussions were obviously very intense and useful but a little hard for me to follow.  I did leave a posting here which suggested that unconferences or unworkshops may not work for newbies to a professional field who are seeking more structure in a conference… I’m curious to see if Tony responds, but cocomment doesn’t appear to work well on blogger.com.  I can add in my tags, but I can’t use the tracking function – the option isn’t there to select – I wonder why that is?

Okay – last task for tonight and I’m up to date. Day 6 of the challenge is a task that I think I already do and in fact, I’m not going to do this task, but just point to where I’ve started to engage in a discussion already – it’s on Sarah Stewart’s blog and is the start of a discussion about do you have time to learn?

Having completed my tasks for the last 3 days I now feel very virtuous and will be back tomorrow night to continue!

The joint presentation by Angela Hook, Sarah Bodell, Will Wade from Oxford Brookes, and Natan Berry in USA and myself seemed to go extremely well with good interest by those in the audience. Check out Angela’s posting on the Salford OT blog. I’ve also included a copy of the powerpoint presentation here:

so in Angela’s words, please take the time to look at the presentation, and leave a comment, even if it is just to let me know that you visited. Click on “comment” at the end of the post and type your comment into the pop-up box. Even if you didn’t attend, please feel free to comment. Or head back over to Angela and Sarah’s blog and leave comments there.. or check out Will’s or Natan’s blogs (click on their name above to get taken to their blogs).

Today’s challenge was good as it made me go back to a programme called coComment which I had signed up for a while ago and never actually got around to using!

In today’s challenge we are reminded that leaving a single comment and then moving on isn’t the best way to engage in an ongoing conversation, or to use blog commenting as a way of learning. I have tried to keep track of some of the blogs where I do leave comments and then try to follow up to see if the blogger has responded back. But of course when I get busy, or sidetracked I forget where I’ve been and I don’t get back to what could end up being a very productive discussion. So my goal through this challenge is to keep using cocomment and see how more effective I can be. (BTW – from the 31 day Comment challenge – you can link to an excellent post by  Sue Waters about how to sign up and manage your comments using coComment.

The task for today is to comment on a blog you’ve never commented on before. This was a good task today as it sent me back down through some of my blog comments to find a new occupational therapy blog.

I started looking down my comments and didn’t have to go too far before I found a comment on one of my entries which came from an occupational therapist (Cheryl) who had a blog that I’d never seen before.  Hopefully by leaving a comment on Cheryl’s blog, she may come back over to mine and  continue to comment!  There are so few occupational therapists maintaining blogs.. so I must keep popping in to see what issues she raises from her practice.
Task 2 and Day  2 done.. and also wondering how the presentation will go for the British conference…..